HT 

\31Z 




i riifliii 111 



1 LL.iUULLUUlLlliUtlll>lllUJiliUliii«HLliiH!lIf L£U y 



1^ 



I ,-. ,^ N 



<^' 



^^<^ 



^,^ 



O. y 



^ 



^K>>^ 



. ^"^^ 



V^' 



•■^. ^ 



^'m^' 



'^ ^ o^ 



s^.*^ .^^' 






V' 



//^ 



^^m3^' 






^[^(M^^^ '- 






\^^ 



smvh'o '"^.i- : 



^ 



'^^*:0)>'i 



^'^^.^^^^^^ <- 



^^^\- 



^ a^/rr/-^ 



O . A^ 



> Xi,' 





x^^ ">; 








^^>m 


r:. 


'"^^ 



^ c 



. '^^^ 






^■^'' 






"^^ V^' 



.' o\^' 













I. 



% 


/ 


\ 

V 

9- i§ 


x^^ 


^x. 


»■ ^ 








,.-^' 



V^^ 













^^<^^ 

.^^^^r^ 






s^ .A 



> . V. I fc .- -^^ ; 



.\ 



r-^^ .V 



o. 
'K?'^ '^^ ^ 



'^^ v^ 



.^■^ ""^. 



** 



THE 



AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 



BY 



REV. RUFUS W. CLARK. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 
AMEEICAN TEACT SOCIETY, 

28 CORNHILL, BOSTON. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Mass. 



LC Control Number 




CO NT EI tmp96 027176 



CHAPTER I. 

THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 

Page 
We are called to discuss the Slave Trade anew — The contest be- 
tween Freedom and Slavery— Responsibility for the progress 
of the latter — Jefferson's view of God's justice — Many indeed 
discard the " higher law" views of Patrick Henry— Gouver- 
neur Morris— John Jay — TVashington — The American Revolu- 
tion a Contest for Natural Rights — Views of Hamilton, Lafay- 
ette, and Washington — the Constitutional Convention — Mod- 
ern Degeneracy — The Slave Trade and Slavery alike in principle 
— Testimony of the Presbyterian General Assemby — Alarming 
aspect of this degeneracy, 7 

CHAPTER II. 

HISTORY OF THE SLAVE TRADE. 

Dates from 1503 — Portuguese, French, and English — First im- 
portation into America in 1G20 — Waste of Life — The " Middle 
Passage " — Statistics — Disclosures elicited by the British Par- 
liament — A Slave ship described — The ship " Zoreg " — Hor- 
rors of the trade can not be written, 19 

CHAPTER III. 

EFFECTS OF THE SLAVE TRADE UPON AFRICA. 

Barrier to Social and Moral Improvement — Condition of Africa 
in the 12th and 16th centuries — In 1700 — In 1726 — In 1819 — 
Changes in the same District under the Effects of the Traflfic — 
Cruelties of Native Chiefs — Bloody Customs — These due, in 
great part, to the Slave Trade — Slavery in Africa compared 
with that in America (Note) — Blood crying from the Ground, 32 

CHAPTER lY. 

EFFORTS TO ABOLISH THE SLAVE TRADE. 

First Advocate — The " Friend " — Yearly Meetings in 1696, 1727, 
and 1760 — First act of Voluntary Emancipation — Goodwyn 



VI CONTENTS. 

— Baxter — Whitefield — Wesley — Thomas Clarkson — Early 
History — Premium Essay on the Slave Trade — Obtains the Prize 

— Devotes himself to the Cause for life — His Supporters — 
Sacrifices — Joined by Wilberforce — Committee of Twelve — 
Granville Sharp — Efforts to secure the action of Parliament 

— Opposition — Resolution in 1808 — Passage of the Bill to 
abolish the Traffic — First Movements in the United States — 
Laws of 1794 and 1800 — Importation of Slaves prohibited in 
1808 — The Traffic declared Piracy in 1820 — Opinions of Memo- 
rialists and Eminent Citizens — Abolition of the Traffic by Euro- 
pean Governments — Noble Conduct of Great Britain, - - 43 

CHAPTER V. 

FAILURE OF MEASURES TO DESTROY THE SLAVE TRADE. 

The Traffic still continued — Increased cruelties of it — Comj)licity 
of our own country — Refusal to join with England and France 
in its suppression — Conduct of Mexico in Contrast — Causes of 
the Failure in this Country -- The Slave Trade a legitimate Pro- 
duct of Slavery — Annexation of Texas — War with Mexico — 
Feeling in England in Relation to our Conduct, - - - - 69 

CHAPTER VI. 

EVIDENCES OF THE REVIVAL OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN 
THE UNITED STATES. 

The South not unanimous in favor of such revival — Need of sup- 
port to those who oppose it — The magnitude of the evil no 
safeguard against it — Difficult to obtain Evidence of its present 
Extent — Statistics of the Trade —The yacht " Wanderer " — 
The " Echo " — Other instances — Advertisement of newly im- 
ported slaves for sale — Statement of a United States Senator — 
Statements of Southern Papers — Southern Politicians — Public 
Meetings — Protest of Grand Jury against the outlawry of the 
Traffic — Opinions of Eminent Statesmen — Hon. H. W. Davis 

— Resolutions of Legislature of New York, 84 

CHAPTER VII. 

CONCLUSION. 

EfTects of Reopening the Traffic — Upon the Secular Interests of 
the Country — Upon its Religious Interest — Appeal to the Na- 
tion — Responsibility upon the Churches, 97 



THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 



CHAPTER I 



THE QUESTION^ AT ISSUE. 



Ecclesiastes iv. 1. So I returned, and considered all the oppressions 
that are done under the sun : and behold the tears of such as were op- 
pressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors 
there was power; but they had no comforter. 

It is certainly surprising, that in this nineteenth 
century, and under the light of free and Christian 
institutions, we should be called upon to discuss 
anew the subject of the African slave trade. It was 
supposed that the inexpediency and iniquity of this 
traffic were universally conceded ; that the effi^rts of 
philanthropic and Christian men, upon two conti- 
nents, to enlighten pubhc opinion, had been success- 
ful ; and that the action of our government and the 
governments of EuropCj in abolishing said traffic, 
was regarded as final. 

But for several years past there has been growing 
up in the community a power that plants itself in 
direct antagonism to the teachings of our religion, 
the professed aim of our political institutions, the 
influence of our educational systems, and the senti- 



8 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

ments inculcated in our national literature. A 
battle is in progress between liberty and slavery, 
God's truth and the vile passions of men, that perils 
the existence of this republic, and touches every 
vital interest. And, to crown the triumphs of the 
slave power, we again have vessels fitting out in our 
ports, north and south, to bring to our shores the 
suffering children of Africa, and entail anew upon 
that continent and our own, the evils and horrors 
of this accursed traiBc. 

It may be a delicate question to inquire who, in 
the various States of this Union, are responsible for 
the growth of this evil ; who, by their direct action, 
their silence, or their apologies for slavery, have 
made contributions to its strength. To his own 
conscience, and before God, each man must answer. 

When benevolent societies, ecclesiastical bodies, 
an influential press, churches professing to be Chris- 
tian, unite with a demoralized public opinion, and 
an oppressive secular authority, to perpetuate or 
extend a system of iniquity, there is created a force 
for evil, against which even millions of free Christian 
men find it difficult to contend. The virus enters 
the arteries and muscles of the national life, palsies 
the sinews of the natural strength, and poisons the 
fountams of national existence. And who will 
answer for the consequences of fostering such an 
evil in the heart of a country blessed as ours has 
been by Heaven ? Have we received any special 
license to sin, with an exemption from the action of 



SEKTIME:srTS OF JEFFERSON. 9 

those eternal laws that bind the penalty to the 
transgression ? 

Is it not true now, as of the past, that " the nation 
and kingdom that will not serve Thee shall perish, 
yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted " ? Could 
the spirits of departed American heroes return, with 
what increased emj)hasis Vv^ould they reiterate the 
burning words that expressed their feehngs and 
principles on this momentous question ! 

Referring to the struggle for American indepen- 
dence, and the palpable inconsistency of those who 
achieved it, Thomas Jefferson said : 

"What an incomprehensible machine is man, who can 
endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, 
in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be 
deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through 
his trial, and inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour 
of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that 
which he rose in rebellion to oppose ! . . Can the liberties of 
a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only 
firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these 
liberties are * the gift of God ? That they are not to be 
violated but with his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my coun- 
try, when I reflect that God is just ; that his justice can not 
sleep for ever ; that, considering numbers, nature, and natu- 
ral means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an 
exchange of situation, is among possible events ; that it may 
become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty 
has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." 

If, then, every attribute of the Almighty is 
against the continuance of this system of oppression, 



10 THE AFRICAJSr SLAVE TRADE, 

with, what feelings must he view the efforts to 
revive the traffic in human beings, in the face of the 
existing light and wide-spread knowledge of the 
evils of slavery ! We tremble when we remember 
that God is just, and that his justice can not sleep 
for ever. 

It is true that there are persons, not a few, who 
do not recognize the views and attributes of the 
Almighty, when considering this question. The 
idea of a higher power than that of the slave power, 
has been, over and over again, treated with a sneer of 
contempt, in circles where we had a right to look for 
better things. Language has been used, and prin- 
ciples have been set forth, by professed teachers of 
public morals, that tend to sap the foundations of 
all morality, blunt the public conscience, bring con- 
tempt upon the religion of the Bible, and provoke 
the wrath of Heaven. And imless the nation will 
learn, by the teachings of revelation, and the ordi- 
nary course of divine providence, that there is a 
government above all human governments, and a 
power to which human authorities are amenable, we 
shall learn it in another way, and perhaps by a bitter 
experience. The words of Patrick Henry, the 
apostle of liberty, which he uttered in 1773, are 
peculiarly applicable to the present day. He said ; 

" It is not a little surprising, that the professors of Christi- 
anity, whose chief excellence consists in softening the human 
heart, in cherishing and improving its finer feelings, should 
encourage a practice so totally repugnant to the first 



PATRICK HEjN'RY, gouver:n'eur moeris. 11 

impressions of right and wrong. What adds to the wonder 
is, that this abominable practice has been introduced in the 
most enlightened ages. Times that seem to have pretensions 
to boast of high improvements in the arts and sciences, and 
refined morahty, have brought into general use, and guarded 
by many laws, a species of violence and tyranny, which our 
more rude and barbarous, but more honest ancestors de- 
tested. Is it not amazing, that at a time when the rights of 
humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a 
country, above all others, fond of liberty, — that in such an age, 
and in such a country, we find men professing a religion the 
most humane, mild, gentle, and generous, yet adopting a prin- 
ciple as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the 
Bible, and destructive to liberty ? Every thinking, honest 
man rejects it in speculation. How few in practice, from / 
conscientious motives ! " f 

Indeed, to express our views of slavery and the 
slave trade, we could not employ more intense and 
truthful words than were uttered by the men who 
participated in the struggle for American liberty, 
who were members of the convention that framed 
the Constitution of the United States, and the 
leaders of public opinion in the early history of our 
nation. 

We might quote the language of Gouverneur Mor- 
ris, of Pennsylvania, who, early in the convention, 
said, " He never would concur in upholding domestic 
slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the 
curse of Heaven ! " 

The general opinion existing at that time is 
expressed by John Jay, James Monroe, James Mad- 



12 THE AFBICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

ison, Benjamin Franklin, and the immortal "Wash- 
ington. Mr. Jay was known as the earnest and 
uncompromising advocate of freedom. In one of 
his letters from Spain, he wrote as follows : 

" The State of New York is rarely out of my mind or 
heart, and I am often disposed to write much respecting its 
affairs ; but I have so little information as to its present 
political objects and operations, that I am afraid to attempt 
it. An excellent law might be made out of the Pennsylvania 
one, for the gradual abolition of slavery. Till America 
comes into this measure, her prayers to Heaven will be 
impious. This is a strong expression, but it is just. Were I 
in your legislature, I would present a bill for the purpose 
with great care, and I would never cease moving it till it 
became a law, or I ceased to be a member. I believe that 
God governs the world, and I beheve it to be a maxim in his, 
as in our court, that those who ask for equity ought to do it." 

Can any princiiDles be clearer, more just, more 
humane than these ? 

The opinions and feelings of Washington, who 
was President of the Convention that formed the 
Constitution, may be gathered from his letters. In 
one addressed to Robert Morris, Esq., he said : 

" I hope that it will not be conceived from these observa- 
tions, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people who are 
the subject of this letter, in slavery. I can only say, that 
there is not a man living, who wishes more sincerely than I 
do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it ; but there is 
only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be 
accomplished, and that is, by the legislative authority ; and 
this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall not be wanting" 



SENTIME:NrTS OF WASHINGTOlSr. 13 

In another to John F. Mercer, Esq., he said t 

"I never mean, unless some particular circumstance 
should compel me to it, to possess another slave hy purchase ; 
it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted hy which 
slavery in this country may he abolished by law" 

In writing to Gen. Lafayette, he said : 

" The henevolence of your heart, my dear Marquis, is so 
conspicuous on all occasions, that I never wonder at fresh 
proofs of it; but your late purchase of an estate in the 
colony of Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves, 
is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to 
God, a Hke spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds 
of the people in this country." 

These opinions, and many others that we might 
adduce, bearing against slavery as it existed at that 
period, bear, with augmented power, against the 
foreign traffic in slaves. Indeed, it was the influence 
of these very oj)inions, and the persevering efforts 
of these heroes, that secured the passage of the law 
for the abolition of the slave trade. 

Having just emerged from the contest to secure 
American liberty, the inconsistency of upholding 
the slave traffic was too glaring not to be seen by 
every honest mind. And, at that time, under the 
tuition of the great American struggle, the hostility 
to slavery was national, and the pro-slavery spirit . 
was local, and mainly confined to those having a 
pecuniary interest in slaves. The system was 
looked upon as a temporary domestic evil, rather 



14 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, 

than as a permanent institution, and the Constitu- 
tion was framed with reference to its gradual and 
final extinction. 

Indeed, the political philosophy that underlay 
the American revolution, embraced not simply the 
freedom of this nation, but the rights of human 
nature. This was the animating spirit of the move- 
ment, as directly opposed to the evil we are consid- 
ering as light is opposed to darkness, 

Alexander Hamilton directed against the odious 
stamp act the authority of British law, as he found 
it written down by Blackstone. 

" The law of nature, being coeval with God himself, is, of 
course, superior to any other. It is binding over all the 
globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are 
of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are 
valid derive all their authority, mediately or immediately, 
from this original." 

Then, as if disdaining to stand on any mere human 
authority, however high, the framer of the American 
Constitution declared : 

*' The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged 
for among old parchments or musty records. They are 
written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human 
natm'e, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal 
power." 

Lafayette closed his review of the Revolution, 
when returning to France, with this beautiful and 
glowing apostrophe : 



LANGUAGE OF CONSTITUTIOi^AL COJS^VENTIONo 15 

" May this great temple which we have just erected to 
liberty, always be an instruction to oppressors, an example 
to the oppressed, a refuge for the rights of the human race, 
and an object of delight to the manes of its founders," 

" Happy," (said Washington, when announcing the treaty 
of peace to the army,) " thrice happy shall they be pro- 
nounced hereafter, who shall have contributed any thing, 
who shall have performed the meanest office in erecting 
this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire on the broad 
basis of independency, who shall have assisted in protecting 
the rights of human nature, and establishing an asylum for 
the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions." 

And would that the solemn injunction uttered at 
the close of the Convention that adopted the Fed- 
eral Constitution might be sounded, in trumpet 
peals, through the length and breadth of our land. 
Said those noble patriots, '-^Let it he remembered^ 
that it has ever been the pride and boast of America^ 
that the rights for which she contended were the 
EIGHTS OF HUMAK NATURE." How far the present 
generation has fallen from that sublime principle, I 
need not stop to show. That a fearful responsibility- 
rests somewhere upon the creators of public opinion, 
in state and church, at this day, I solemnly believe. 

One cause of this rapid retrograde movement is, 
doubtless, the strong effort that has been made to 
separate the evil of the extension of slavery and the 
revival of the trade, from the evil of the system 
itself 

Many have taken the ground, that while they 
were opposed to the introduction of slavery into new 



16 THE AFRICAJSr SLAVE TRADE. 

territories, and to the revival of the traffic, they 
would not interfere with it where it was an estab- 
lished institution. But the arguments employed 
against its extension or increase, if they have any 
force, lie equally against the system in any locality. 
If it is an evil in Kansas, it is just as much an evil in 
Virginia. If it is wrong to capture the African on 
his own soil, and subject him to the horrors of the 
slave ship, then it is wrong to retain him in slavery. 
And wherever an evil exists on the face of the earth, 
it is the duty of every honest man to express his 
convictions concerning it, and to do what lies legiti- 
mately in his power to remove it. 

Much sophistry has been advanced on this point 
to strengthen the slave power, which has cor- 
rupted the public opinion in regard to our individual 
responsibility in relation to the evil. 

In the early history of the country, our statesmen 
and theologians regarded slavery and the slave trade 
as one in nature and sinfulness. 

In 1794, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church of the United States expressed its opinion 
in the following language : 

" 1 Tim. i. 10. The law is made for man-stealers. This 
crime, among the Jews, exposed the perpetrators of it to cap- 
ital punishment ; Exodus xxi. 1 6 ; and the apostle here 
classes them with sinners of the first rank. The word he 
uses, in its original import, comprehends all who are con- 
cerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in 
retaining them in it. Hominum fures, qui servos vel liberos 



DECLARATION OF THE GEI!^EEAL ASSEMBLY. 17 

ahducunt, retinent^ vendunt, vel emunt. Stealers of men 
are all those who bring oiF slaves or free men, and keep, sell, 
or buy them. To steal a free man, says Grotius, is the high- 
est kind of theft. In other instances, we only steal human 
property ; but when we steal or retain men in slavery, we 
seize those who, in common with ourselves, are constituted, 
by the original grant, lords of the earth. Genesis i. 28. 
Vide Poll syn opsin in loc." 

The state of public feeling in the year 1818, is 
indicated in the views expressed at that period by 
the same body, as may be seen in " The Digest of 
the General Assembly," from which the following 
extract is made : 

" The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, hav- 
ing taken into consideration the si>bject of slavery, think 
proper to make known their sentiments upon it. 

" We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the 
human race by another, as a gross violation of the most pre- 
cious and sacred rights of human nature ; as utterly incon- 
sistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our 
neighbor as ourselves ; and as totally irreconcilable with the 
spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoins 
that * all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to 
you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in 
the moral system ; it exhibits rational, accountable, and 
immortal beings in such circumstances as scarcely to leave 
them the power of moral action. It exhibits them as depen- 
dent on the will of others, whether they shall receive reli- 
gious instruction ; whether they shall know and worship the 
true God ; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the 
gospel ; whether they shall perform the duties, and cherish 
the endearments of husbands and wives, parents and ehil- 
2 



18 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TBADE, 

dren, neigbbors and friends; whether they shall preserve 
their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice 
and humanity. Such are some of the consequences of sla- 
very ; consequences not imaginary, but which connect them- 
selves with its very existence. The evils to which the slave 
is always exposed, often take place in their very worst degree 
and form ; and where all of them do not take place, still the 
slave is deprived of his natural rights, degraded as a human 
being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands 
of a master, who may inflict upon him all the hardships and 
injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest. 

*' It is manifestly the duty of all Christians, when the 
inconsistency of slavery with the dictates of humanity and 
religion has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and 
acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied 
endeavors, as speedily as possible, to efface this blot on our 
holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery/ 
throughout the world." 

This is the precise language that that learned and 
pious body of men, at that time used. They de- 
sired, and they looked forward to, "the complete 
abolition of slavery throughout the world." 

The slave trade they regarded as abolished, so far 
as the verdict of Christian nations could secure this 
end. And they were not troubled with any mawk- 
ish sensibility about expressing their views of the 
evils of the system, as they saw them under their 
own eye. The idea of throttling the slave trade 
with one hand, and feeding domestic slavery with 
the other, was one that never occurred to them. 
This is a modem invention, for which the present 
generation must have all the creclit. 



CHAPTER II. 

HISTORY OF THE SLAVE TEADE. 

Exodus xxi. 16. And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if be 
be found in his hand, he shall surely he put to death. 

See the dire victim torn from social life, 

The shrieking babe, the agonizing wife! 

She, wretch forlorn, is dragged by hostile hands, 

To distant tyrants, sold to distant lands, 

Transmitted miseries and successive chains, 

The sole sad heritage her child obtains ! 

E'en this last wretched boon their foes deny. 

To live together, or together die. 

By felon hands, by one relentless stroke, 

See the fond links of feeling nature broke ! 

The fibers twisting round a parent's heart, 

Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part. 

What wrongs, what injuries does Oppression plead, 

To smooth the crime and sanctify the deed ? 

What strange offense, what aggravated sin? 

They stand convicted — of a darker skin! 

Hannah More. 

The commencement of this nefarious traffic dates 
back to the year 1503, when a few slaves were sent 
from the Portuguese settlements in Africa to the 
Spanish colonies in America. It is said, however, 
that before that period, in 1434, a Portuguese cap- 
tain landed in Guinea, and captured some colored 
lads, whom he sold at a profit to the Moors settled 
in the south of Spain. The trade became estab- 
lished in Spain in the year 1517, when Charles V. 



20 THE AFRICAN SLAYE TEADE. 

granted to Lebresa the exclusive right to import 
annually 4000 Africans, who were sold to the Gen- 
oese. The French under Louis XIII., and the 
English in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, permitted 
the traffic, under the plea that the captives taken in 
war would thus be saved from death ; although Eliz- 
abeth protested against the cruelties connected with 
the trade. 

The African chiefs, stimulated by a desire for 
gain, waged war against their neighbors, and thou- 
sands were soon captured, and hurried to the coast, 
to be exchanged for rum, brandy, iron, and toys, 
which constituted the currency of Europeans in this 
traffic. The most unjust and cruel means were 
resorted to in order to carry on the inhuman barter. 
Peaceful villages were ruthlessly invaded ; the inno- 
cent were charged with crimes that they never com- 
mitted ; children were torn from their parents, and 
bound together, two and two, by the neck, with 
heavy pieces of wood, and marched, or rather driven 
to the river or coast, where a multitude of purchasers 
were ready to place them on board their vessels, and 
doom them to all the horrors of the 7niddle passage. 
Thus this traffic was conceived in sin, and baptized 
in every form of iniquity.* 

* For more extended evidences than our limits will allow us to pre- 
sent, see " The Slave Trade and Remedy," by Sir T. F. Buxton j 
Clarkson's " History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade ; " Mr E.- 
Walsh's "Notices of Brazil;" "Articles in Edinburgh Encyclo- 
paedia," and " Encyclopaedia Americana ; " " Benezet's Account of 
Africa ; " " Dupries's Residence in Ashantee," London, 1824. " Life 
of Ashmun." 



FIEST SLAVES BROUGHT TO AMERICA. 21 

In the year 1620, the same year in wliich the Pil- 
grims landed on Plymouth Rock, bringing with 
them hberty, virtue, and a pure faith, a Dutch vessel 
landed twenty negroes at Queenstown, Virginia, 
who were sold to the colonists as slaves, thus open- 
ing the trade with our country. The traffic thus 
sustained by Portugal, Spain, France, and England, 
and having a new field on this continent, gradually 
advanced, producing every where its legitimate and 
terrible effects. So anxious were the jDctty African 
kings to keep up the trade, that when the French 
revolution lessened the demand for human merchan- 
dise, the king of Dahomey sent, in 1796, his brother 
and son to Lisbon, to secure the revival of the traffic, 
and entered into a treaty in favor of Portugal. 

Before this traffic was opened, and the Africans 
were corrupted by drunkenness and avarice, wars 
seldom occurred ; but the introduction of this wick- 
edness opened the door to every crime, and it has 
frequently happened that thousands have been slain, 
while only hundreds have been captured. A sur- 
geon, who sailed fi-om N'ew York to engage in the 
slave trade, made the following record in his journal: 
" The commander of the vessel sent to acquaint the 
king that he wanted a cargo of slaves. Some time 
after, the king sent him word he had not yet met 
with the desired success. A battle was fought, 
which lasted three days. Four thousand five hun- 
dred men were slain upon the spot!" 

Some idea of the waste of fife which this iniquity 



22 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TEADE. 

has occasioned may be gained, wlien we remember 
that dming the last three centuries abont forty 
millions of human beings have been torn from 
Africa, for the purpose of being reduced to servi- 
tude. Besides the loss in war, from fifteen to 
twenty per cent, die on the passage, and many more 
die after being landed.* 

The gifted and humane Wilberforce, in a speech 
before Parliament,! remarked that : 

" He would now say a few words relative to the " middle 
passage," principally to show that regulations could not effect 
a cure of the evil there. Mr. Isaac Wilson had stated in his 
evidence, that the ship in which he sailed, only three years 
ago, was of three hundred and seventy tons, and that she 
carried six hundred and two slaves. Of these she lost one 
hundred and fifty-five There were three or four other ves- 
sels in company with her, which belonged to the same 

* Fifty years ago the Christian (!) slave trade was 80,000 an- 
nually^ now 200,000! Mohammedan slave trade, 50,000 annually. 
The ag-gregate loss of life in the Christian trade, in the successive 
stages of seizure, march, detention, middle passage, after landing, and 
seasoning, is 145 per cent., or 1,450 for every 1,000 available for use in 
the end -, and 100 per cent, loss of life, by the same causes, in the Mo- 
hammedan trade. Consequently, the annual victims of the Christian 
slave trade are 375,600 ; of the Mohammedan, 100,000. Total loss to 
Africa, 475,000 annually ; or, 23,750,000 in half a century, at the same 
rate. 

A slave ship named Jehovah (!) made three voyages between 
Brazil and Angola in thirteen months, of 1836-7, and landed 700 slaves 
the first voyage, 600 the second, and 520 the third, — in all, 1820. — 
Buxton, 

The single town of Liverpool, England, realized in this traffic, 
before its abolition in that empire, a net profit of more than $100,- 
000,000 \— History of Liverpool. 

t From Clarkson's " History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade." 



MORTALITY ON SLAVE SHIPS. 23 

owners. One of these carried four hundred and fifty, and 
buried two hundred ; another carried four hundred and 
sixty-six, and buried seventy-three ; another five hundred 
and forty-six, and buried one hundred and fifty-eight ; and 
from the four together, after the landing of theu^ cargoes, 
two hundred and twenty died. He fell in with another ves- 
sel, which had lost three hundred and sixty-two, but the 
number which had been bought was not specified. Now if 
to these actual deaths, during and immediately after the 
voyage, we were to add the subsequent loss in the seasoning, 
and to consider that this would be greater than ordinary in 
cargoes which were landed in such a sickly state, we should 
find a mortality, which, if it were only general for a few 
months, would entirely depopulate the globe. 

'' He would advert to what Mr. Wilson said, when exam- 
ined, as a surgeon, as to the causes of these losses, and par- 
ticularly on board his own ship, where he had the means of 
ascertaining them. The substance of his reply was this : — that 
most of the slaves labored under a fixed melancholy, which 
now and then broke out into lamentations and plaintive 
songs, expressive of the loss of their relations, friends, and 
country. So powerful did this sorrov/ operate, that many 
of them attempted in various ways to destroy themselves, 
and three actually effected it. Others obstinately refused 
to take sustenance ; and when the whip, and other violent 
means, were used to compel them to eat, they looked up into 
the face of the officer, who unwillingly executed this painful 
task, and said, with a smile, in their own language, ^ Pres- 
ently we shall be no more.' Tliis, their unhappy state of 
mind, produced a general languor and debility, which were 
increased in many instances by an unconquerable aversion 
to food, arising partly from sickness, and partly, to use the 
language of slave captains, from sulkiness. These causes 



24 THE AFRICAN SLA YE TRADE. 

naturally produced tlie flux. The contagion spread ; several 
were carried off daily ; and tlie disorder, aided by so many 
powerful auxiliaries, resisted tlie power of medicine. And 
it was worth while to remark, that these grievous sufferings 
were not owing either to want of care on the part of the 
owners, or to any negligence or harshness of the captain ; 
for Mr. Wilson declared, that his ship was as well fitted out, 
and the crew and slaves as well treated, as any body could 
reasonably expect." 

After giving otlier testimony, Mr. Wilberforce 
added : 

" Such were the evils of the passage. But evils were con- 
spicuous every where in this trade. Never was there, 
indeed, a system so replete with wickedness and cruelty. 
To whatever part of it we turned our eyes, whether to 
Africa, the middle passage, or the West Indies, v/e could 
find no comfort, no satisfaction, no relief. It was the gra- 
cious ordinance of Providence, both in the natural and moral 
world, that good should often arise out of evil. Hurricanes 
cleared the air ; and the propagation of truth was promoted 
by persecution. Pride, vanity, and profusion contributed 
often, in their remoter consequences, to the happiness of 
mankind. In common, what was itself evil and vicious was 
permitted to carry along with it some circumstances of pal- 
liation. The Arab was hospitable ; the robber brave. We 
did not necessarily find cruelty associated with fraud, or 
meanness with injustice. But here the case was far other- 
wise. It was the prerogative of this detestable trafiic to 
separate from evil its concomitant good, and to reconcile 
discordant mischiefs. It robbed war of its generosity ; it 
deprived peace of its security ; we saw in it the vices of pol- 
ished society, without its knowledge or its comforts ; and the 



BEITISH PHILANTHROPISTS. 25 

evils of barbarism, without its simplicity. No age, no sex, 
no rank, no condition, y/as exempt from the fatal influence 
of tills wide-wasting calamity. Thus it attained to the 
fullest measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wicked- 
ness ; and, scorning all competition and comparison, it stood 
without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its 
detestable preeminence." 

The discussion in the British Parliament, while 
the question of the abolition of the slave trade was 
pending, brought out from the noble champions of 
freedom an array of facts that ought to arouse all 
Christian nations to the barbarities of this traffic. 
But the Christian nations need to be Christianized, 
especially this American nation, that is madly plung- 
ing anew into this accursed traffic. We need in an 
American congress a William Wilbeiforce, a Charles 
James Fox, a William Pitt, an Edmund Burke, a 
Thomas Erskine, a Granville Sharp, and a Thomas 
Clarkson, to move the nation, as these nolble men 
moved the British public, and thunder into the ears 
of the 23eople the crimes and cruelties of man- 
stealing, until they rise in their might, and decree 
its annihilation. 

It is im^possible to conceive a more foul blot 
upon the American name, than the revival of this 
traffic at a day like this. It is reversing the wheels 
of civilization, and voluntarily going back to bar- 
barism. It is giving the lie to our boasts of intelli- 
gence, humanity, and freedom. It is directly bid- 
ding defiance to the Almighty, and calling down 



26 THE Africa:^- slave tkade. 

tlie wrath of Heaven. It is adding a chapter to the 
history of this trade, the darkest, the most fearful 
and terrible that was ever written. " Enlightened 
age ! " " Christian nation ! " " Free America ! " 
Let us not mock the common sense of the world by 
the use of these phrases, while this dark cloud is 
casting its shadow over us. Let us, at least, pray 
for dehverance from the lowest form of national 
hypocrisy. 

We would gladly omit the details of the sufferings 
incident to what is called the middle passage, but 
we can not do justice, even to a brief survey of the 
traffic, without adding one or two of the many testi- 
monies on this point. And while gazing upon a 
single picture, if we will multiply these by thou- 
sands, we may approximate towards a realization of a 
passage across the Atlantic in a slaver, and be 
prompted to do what lies in our power to drive this 
master iniquity from the face of the earth. 

In a debate on the slave trade. Mr. Fox justly 
remarked that : 

" True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it con- 
sists not in starting, and shrinking at such tales as these, but 
in a disposition of heart to relieve misery. True humanity 
appertains rather to the mind than the nerves, and prompts 
men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions 
which it suggests." 

Would that the emotions excited by narratives 
like the following, might lead to the formation of 



A SLAVE SHIP DESCRIBED, 27 

principles, the expression of opinions, and the adop- 
tion of vigorous measures, that would roll back the 
tide of this gigantic sin. Mr. Walsh, in his "Notices 
of Brazil," published in London in 1830, and in 
Boston in 1832, thus describes a slave ship examined 
by the English man-of-war in which he returned 
from Brazil, in May, 1829 : 

" She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, three hundred 
and tHrty-six males, and two hundred and twenty-six fe- 
males, making in all five hundred and sixty-two, and had 
been out seventeen days. The slaves were aU enclosed 
under grated hatchways, between decks. The space was so 
low that they sat between each other's legs, and were stowed 
so close together tha^ there was no possibility of their lying 
down, or at all changing their position, by night or day. As 
they belonged to, and were shipped on account of different 
individuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with the 
owners' marks, of different forms. These were impressed 
under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate 
informed me, with perfect indifference, ' Queimados pelo 
ferro quento, — burnt with red-hot iron.' Over the hatch- 
way stood a ferocious looking fellow, with a scourge of many 
twisted thongs in his hand, who was tlie slave-driver of the 
ship ; and whenever he heard the shghtest noise below, he 
shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. As 
soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, 
their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. 

" They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in 
our looks, which they had not been accustomed to, and feel- 
ing, instinctively, that we were friends, they immediately 
began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had 
picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, ' Yiva ! 



28 THE AFRICAN SLAYE TRADE. 

viva!' The women were particularly excited Tliey all 
held up their arms, and when we bent down and shook 
hands with them, they could not contain their delight ; they 
endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to 
kiss our hands, and we understood that they knew we had 
come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their 
heads, in apparently hopeless dejection ; some were greatly 
emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. 
But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was 
how it was possible for such a number of human beings to 
exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could 
cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, 
except that immediately under the grated hatchway, was 
shut out from light, or air, and this when the thermometer, 
exposed to the open sky, was standing, in the shade on our 
deck, at 89°. The space between decks was divided into 
two compartments, three feet three inches high ; the size of 
one was sixteen feet by eighteen, and of the other forty by 
twenty-one ; into the first were crammed the women and 
girls ; into the second the men and boys. Two hundred and 
twenty-six fellow creatures were thus thrust into one space 
two hundred and eighty-eight feet square, and three hun- 
dred and thirty-six into another space eight hundred feet 
square, giving to the whole an average of twenty-three 
inches, and to each of the women not more than thirteen 
inches, though many of them were pregnant. We also 
found manacles, and fetters of different kinds ; but it ap- 
pears that they had all been taken off before we boarded. 
The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odor 
so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter there, even 
had there been room. They Avere measured, as cbove, 
when the slaves left them. The officers insisted that the 
poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck, to get 



A SLAVE SHIP DESCRIBED. 29 

air and water. This was opposed by tlie mate of the slaver, 
who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared that 
they would murder them all. The officers, however, per- 
sisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. It 
is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption ; five 
hundred and seven fellow creatures, of all ages and sexes, 
some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in 
a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the 
luxury of a little fresh air and water. 

*' They came swarming up, like bees from the aperture of a 
hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from 
stem to stern ; so that it was impossible to imagine where 
they could all have come from, or how they could all have 
been stowed aivay. On looking into the places where they 
had been crammed, there were found some children, next 
to the side of the ship, in the places most remote from light 
and air ; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the 
rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent 
as to life or death, and when they were carried on deck, 
many of them could not stand. 

"After enjoying for a short time the unusual luxury of air, 
some water was brought ; it was then that the extent of 
their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all 
rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or 
blows could restrain them ; they shrieked, and struggled, 
and fought with one another for a drop of this precious 
liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is 
nothing from which slaves, in the mid-passage, suffer so 
much, as want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out 
casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves 
are received on board, to start the casks, and refill them 
with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected 
to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage 



30 THE AFEICAK SLA YE TRADE. 

found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing 
but salt water. All the slaves on board perished ! We 
could judge of the extent of their suiFerings from the afflict- 
ino' sio'ht we now saw. 

'' AYlien the poor creatures were ordered down again, 
several of them came and pressed their heads against 
our knees, with looks of the greatest anguish, at the prospect 
of returning to the horrid place of suffering below." 

The devoted philanthropist, Granville Sharp, 
presented a case to the British public that justly 
aroused their indignation. It shows the power of 
avarice to obliterate the last vestiges of humanity, 
and convert men into devils. 

" From the trial, it appeared that the ship Zong, Luke 
CoUingwood master, sailed from the island of St. Thomas, on 
the coast of Africa, September 6, 1781, with four hundred 
and forty slaves, and fourteen whites on board, for Jamaica, 
and that in the November following she fell in with that 
island ; but, instead of proceeding to some port, the master, 
mistaking, as he alleges, Jamaica for Hispaniola, ran her to 
leeward. Sickness and mortality had by this time taken 
place on board the crowded vessel ; so that, between the 
time of leaving the coast of Africa and the 29th of Novem- 
ber, sixty slaves and seven white people had died, and a 
great number of the surviving slaves were then sick, and not 
likely to live. 

" On that day, the master of the ship called together a 
few of the officers, and stated to them, that if the sick slaves 
died a natural death, the loss would fall on the owners of the 
ship, — it would be the loss of the underwriters ; alleging, at 
the same time, that it would be less cruel to throw the sick 



MURDER OP 132 SLAYES. 31 

wretches into tlie sea, tlian to suffer them to linger out a few 
days under the disorder with which they were afflicted, 

" To this inhuman proposal the mate, James Kelsal, at 
first objected ; but CoUingwood at length prevailed on the 
crew to listen to it. He then chose out from the cargo one 
hundred and thirty-two slaves, and brought them on deck, 
all, or most of whom were sickly, and not likely to recover, 
and he ordered the crew by turns to throw them into the 
sea. ' A parcel ' of them were accordingly thrown over- 
board, and, on counting over the remainder, next morning, 
it appeared that the number so drowned had been fifty-four. 
He then ordered another parcel to be thrown over, which, 
on a second counting, on the succeeding day, was proved to 
have amounted to forty-two. 

" On the third day, the remaining thirty-six were brought 
on deck, and, as these now resisted the cruel pur230se of 
their masters, the arms of twenty-six were fettered with 
irons, and the savage crew proceeded with the diabolical 
work, casting them down to join their comrades of the former 
days. Outraged misery could endure no longer ; the ten 
last victims sprang disdainfully from the grasp of their 
tyrants, defied their power, and, leaping into the sea, felt a 
momentary triumph in the embrace of death." 

These statements, distressing as they are, only 
afford us a specimen of the barbarities and horrors 
of this crime. The cruelties of the African slave 
trade have never been written, — can not be written. 
No pen can describe them ; and yet, how many 
American citizens, whose feelings will revolt at these 
details of suffering, will hear with comparative indif- 
ference of the revival of the iniquity in our land ! 



CHAPTER III. 

EFFECT OF THE SLA YE TKADE UPOIN" AFRICA. 

Isaiah xlii. 22» But this is a people robbed and spoiled ; they are all 
of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses , they are 
for a prey, and none delivereth, for a spoil, and none saith, Restore. 

Ix forming an estimate of the evils of the slave 
trade, its disastrous influence upon Africa itself has 
not been, in this country, duly considered. 

While it has been the duty of Christian nations to 
give to the benighted inhabitants on that continent 
the gospel, and its blessed, civil, social, and domestic 
institutions, they have, instead, entailed upon them 
a series of the worst evils and calamities that can 
afflict mankind. 

Besides the sufferings, and fearful waste of human 
life, to which we have referred, the slave trade has 
stood for centuries as a barrier to the moral and 
social improvement of the people. It has shut out 
the light of knowledge, the refining and eleva- 
ting influences of civilization, and the precious 
truths and glorious hopes of Christianity. It 
has paralyzed industry, discouraged agriculture, pre- 
vented the establishment of commercial relations 



EARLY CO]^DITIO]sr OF AFRICA. 33 

with other nations, rendered property and hfe inse- 
cure, kindled the spirit of war, and fostered the 
vilest passions. It has plunged millions of our 
fellow-men into the lowest depths of superstition 
and barbarism. It has added blackness to the dark- 
ness of heathenism, rent asunder natural ties, ren- 
dered savage life more savage, and perpetuated the 
reign of anguish and despair. Justly did John 
Wesley, in a moment of burning indignation, desig- 
nate this trade as " the execrable sum of all vil- 
lanies." 

Vf e have no means of accurately describing the 
condition of Africa previous to the traffic in slaves, 
as so little intercourse had existed between that 
country and the nations of Europe. But Sir T. F. 
Buxton has collected, in his work on the " Slave 
Trade and its Remedy," proofs that the people were 
in a more prosperous condition at that time than 
they have been since the commerce in slaves was 
opened. He says : " It is remarkable that the 
geographers, Nubiensis in the 12th century, and 
Leo Africanus in the 16th, state that in their time 
the people betv^een the Senegal and Gambia 
never made war on each other, but employed them- 
selves in keeping their herds, and in tilling the 
ground. When Sir I. Hawkins visited Africa, in 
1562-7, with intent to seize the people, he found the 
land well cultivated^ bearing plenty of grain and 
fruit, and the towns prettily laid out." * 

* Archbishop Sharp, the grandfather of Granville Sharp, in a ser- 
3 



34 THE AFEICAlsr SLAYE TRADE. 

"Bozman, about 1700, writes that it was the early 
European settlers who first sowed dissensions among 
the natives of Africa, for the sake of purchasing their 
prisoners of war. Benezet quotes William Smith 
who was sent by the African Company in 1726, to 
visit their settlement, and who stated, from the tes- 
timony of a factor who had lived ten years in the 
country, that the discerning natives accounted it 
their greatest unhappiness ever to have been visited 
by Europeans." 

Dupries, in a journey to Coomassie, in 1819, thus 
describes the country then recently laid waste by the 
king of Ashantee : * " From the Praa, southward, 
the progress of the sword down to the margin of the 
sea, may be traced by moldering ruins, desolate 
plantations, and osseous relics ; such are the traits of 
negro ferocity. The inhabitants, whether Assins or 
Fantees, whose youth and beauty exempted them 
from slaughter on the spot, were only reserved to 
grace a triumph in the metropolis of their con- 
querors, where they were again subject to a scru- 

mon preached before the British House of Commons, one hundred 
and fifty- six years ago, used the following- remarkable language : 

" That Africa, which is not now more fruitful of monsters, than it 
was once for excellently wise and learned men, — that Africa, which 
formerly afforded us our Clemens^ our Origen, our TertuUian, our Cy- 
prian, our Augustine, and many other extraordinary lights in the 
Church of God, — that famous Africa, in whose soil Christianity did 
thrive so prodigiously, and could boast of so many flourishing 
churches, — alas ! is now a wilderness. ' The wild boars have broken 
into the vineyard, and ate it up, and it brings forth nothing but briers 
and thorns,' to use the words of the prophet." 

* Quoted by Buxton, p. 228. 



BAKBAEIZING INFLUENCE OF THE TRAFIC. 35 

tiny, which finally awarded the destiny of sacrifice 
or bondage ; few or none being left behind to mourn 
over their slaughtered friends, or the catastrophe of 
their unhappy country." 

The state of a district exempt from the terrors of 
the slave trade, and then again under their influence, 
is given by Mr. Randall, who was at St. Louis, on 
the Senegal, from 1813 to 1817: "At that time the 
place was in the possession of the English, and the 
surrounding po23ulation were led to believe that the 
slave trade was irrevocably abolished ; they, in con- 
sequence, betook themselves to cultivating the land, 
and every available piece of ground was under til- 
lage. The people passed from one village to 
another without arms, and without fear, and every 
thing wore an air of contentment." 

Mr. Randall was there again when the place was 
in the possession of France, " and then," he says, 
" the slave trade had revived all its horrors. Vessels 
were lying in the river to receive cargoes of human 
flesh; the country was laid waste; not a vestige of 
cultivation was to be seen, and no one dared to 
leave the limits of his village without the most 
ample means of protection." 

It is a significant fact, that while reading of the 
cruelties of the natives to shipwrecked seamen, we 
find the people of the same districts, described 
two hundred years before, as being " unwilling to 
do injury to any, especially to strangers," and as 
being " a gentle and loving people." But under the 



36 THE AFBICAN SLAYS TRADE. 

influence of the slave trade, kindness has given place 
to a deadly revenge, the spirit of hospitality has 
yielded to the spirit of war and bloodshed, peaceful 
neighborhoods have been converted into hostile 
armies, and there has grown up a fearful indifference 
to human sufferings and human life. 

It is heart-sickening to read of hundreds of human 
beings offered in the sacrifices of idolatrous worship, 
and other hundreds put to death, in various ways, 
for the amusement of a chief or a king. 

In 1836, Mr. Girard says that he was at the king's 
fete at Dahomey, when about five or six hundred of 
his subjects were sacrificed for his recreation. Some 
were decapitated, others were precipitated from a 
lofty fortress, and transfixed on bayonets prepared 
to receive them ; — and all this merely for amuse- 
ment." * 

At the death of a king, immense numbers were 
sacrificed, and in the most frightful and barbarous 
manner. " On such an occasion," says Mr. Buxton, 
"the brothers, sons, and nephews of the king, 
affecting temporary insanity, burst forth with their 
muskets, and fire promiscuously among the crowd ; 
even a man of rank, if they meet him, is their vic- 
tim; nor is their murder of him, or any other, on 
such an occasion, visited or prevented; the scene 
can hardly be imagined. I was assured by several, 
that the custom for Sai Quammie was repeated 
weekly for three months, and that two hundred 

* Colonization Herald, July, 1837. 



BLOODY CUSTOMS. 37 

slaves were sacrificed, and twenty-five barrels of 
powder fired each time. But the custom for the 
king's mother, the regent of the kingdom during the 
invasion of Fantee, is the most celebrated. The 
kino* himself devoted three thousand victims, up- 
wards of two thousand of whom were Fantee pris- 
oners. Five of the largest places furnished one 
hundred victims, and twenty barrels of powder 
each ; and most of the smaller towns, ten victims, 
and two barrels of powder each." 

Mr. Dupries relates many instances of the most 
atrocious cruelty. As an instance of the bloody 
customs of Ashantee, he tells us that the king, pre- 
vious to entering upon the campaign against Gaman, 
sacrificed "thirty-two males and eighteen females, 
as an expiatory ofiering to his gods ; " but the 
answers from the priests being deemed by the coun- 
cil as still devoid of inspiration, the king was induced 
to ^^maJce a custom^'' at the sepulchers of his ances- 
tors, where many hundreds bled. On the conclusion 
of the war, 2000 prisoners were slaughtered, in honor 
of the shades of departed kings and heroes." 

The existence of these bloody customs is con- 
firmed by the Rev. Thomas B. Freeman,* Wesleyan 
missionary to Africa, who was an eyewitness to 
many scenes of horror. Visiting Ashantee in Feb- 
ruary, 1839, he writes : "Last night a sister of Ko- 

* For an interesting account of the condition of the Africans, see 
"A History of the Wesleyan Missions on the Western Coast of 
Africa," hy William Fox, upwards of ten years a missionary on the 
Gambia. London, 1851. 



38 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

micH died, after a long sickness. Her death was 
announced by the firing of muskets, and the mourn- 
ers going about the streets. As I walked out in the 
morning, I saw the mangled corpse of a poor female 
slave, who had been beheaded during the night, 
lying in the public street. ... In the course of the 
day, I saw groups of the natives dancing around 
this victim of superstitious cruelty, with numerous 
frantic gestures, who seemed to be in the zenith 
of their happiness." 

On arriving at Coomassie, Mr. Freeman again 
witnessed similar scenes of darkness. " Throughout 
the day," he writes, "I heard the horrid sound of 
the death drum, and was told in the evening that 
about twenty-five human beings had been sacrificed, 
some in the town, and some in the surrounding vil- 
lages ; the heads of those killed in the villages being 
brought into the town in baskets. I fear that there 
will be more of this awful work to-morrow." 

Again visiting the capital of Ashantee in Decem- 
ber, 1841, he says: "In the afternoon I heard that a 
chief had died, and that three human sacrifices had 
been made in the town. The mangled victims were 
left in the street as usual. O God, have mercy upon 
this benighted people ! I saw a lad near my lodg- 
ings, who is one of the king's executioners. He had 
decapitated a poor victim that morning. He ap- 
peared to be from sixteen to eighteen years of age. 
I asked him how many persons he had executed. 
He answered, ^eighty.' Oh, awful fact! Eighty 



A DARK CATALOGUE. 39 

immortal spirits hmTied into the eternal world, by 
the hands of a boy under eighteen years of age, and 
he only one of a large member engaged in the same 
dreadful employment ! " 

Similar instances of superstition and cruelty are 
related by the Rev. George Chapman, writing from 
Coomassie, under date of January 2d, 1844, the 
Rev. Henry Wharton, another Wesleyan missionary, 
stationed in Ashantee, in 1846-7, and by the mis- 
sionaries sent out by other denominations of Chris- 
tians. 

But I need not add to this dark catalogue of 
revolting crimes. Enough has been said to give a 
faint idea of the degraded condition of millions of 
our fellow-men upon the continent of Africa. For 
more extended accounts, in addition to the works 
already alluded to, I would refer the reader to the 
writings of Mungo Park, Bosman, Bowdich, Gray, 
Landers, and to the letters and journals of our 
missionaries. 

The facts that we have stated are but specimens 
of the multitudes on record, many of which are more 
revolting than those which we have adduced. 

Gladly would we avoid even an allusion that 
would excite a painful emotion, but the evils of this 
accursed trade, and its blighting influence on Africa, 
ought to be considered, particularly at the present 
time, by every American citizen. And, notwith- 
standing all that has been written, the half of the 
horrors of the system has not been told. There is 



40 THE AFEICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

an unwiitten history of the superstitions and ciniel- 
ties of Africa, known only to the unfortunate suf- 
ferers, and to God, " whose justice can not always 
sleep." 

But we need not be understood as arguing that 
all the evils existing in Africa are caused by the 
blave trade. Heathenism has done its work there, 
as well as in other benighted nations, and slavery 
existed among the people long before the slave trade 
was opened. In some parts of the continent it is in 
a mild form ; in others it is as severe as in some of 
our Southern States. The privileges of the masters 
to abuse their slaves, without redress, are very sim- 
ilar in both countries.* 

But it is the opinion of missionaries who have 
labored in Africa, that the misery of the people has 

* " The master may^ at his discretion^ inflict any species of punishment 
upon the person of his slave.'''' — Stroud., p. 35. 

Even for the murder of a slave, the murderer, in several States, is 
subject only to a fine ; and if the slave die under moderate correc- 
tion, the master is fully acquitted ! A law was passed to this effect, 
in North Carolina, in 1798. It closes thus : " Provided always, this 
act shall not extend to a person killing a slave outlawed, &c., or to 
any slave in the act of resistance to his lawful owner ^ or to any slave DYING 
UNDER MODERATE CORRECTION." 

" A slave is one who is in the power of his master to whom he 
belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his indus- 
try, and his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire 
any thing but what belongs to his master." — Civil Code of 
Louisiana. 

" The condition of slaves in this country is analogous to that of the 
ancient Greeks and Romans, and not that of the feudal times. They 
are generally considered not as persons but as things. They can 
be sold or transferred, as goods or personal estate j they are held 
to be pro nullis^ pro 7nortuis. By the civil law, slaves could not take 
property by descent or purchase ; and I apprehend this to be the law 
of this country. " — I>e55. Rep. IV. 266. South Carolina. 



SEN^TIMENTS OF WILLIAM FOX. 41 

)een fearfully augmented by the slave trade, and in 
ome localities, as we have shown, thriving settle- 
nents have been changed into a howling wilderness. 

Have we not, as a people, a Christian duty to dis- 
marge to that unfortunate and suffering people ? Is 
t not time that we arouse ourselves to the great 
^vork of Christianizing them, and saving coming gen- 
Tations from the awful calamities that have been 
uffered in the past ? 

Let the earnest, stirring words of the devoted 
nissionary, William Fox, that come to us from that 
benighted land, be sounded through the length and 
breadth of America. 

" Surely, ' the voice of our brother's blood crieth ' against 
us ' from the ground.' Yes, the sands of Africa, saturated 
with the life's blood of tens of thousands who have been slain 
in the seizure, cry against us from the ground ; the deserts, 
and the trackless forests, strewed with the skulls and bones 
of thousands who have sickened and died in the march to 
the coast, cry against us from the ground ; the prison-houses 
and the slave-barracoons, planted along the skirts of the 
coast, on the borders of the Atlantic, crammed with hun- 
dreds of negroes who have survived the deadly march, pro- 
miscuously thrown together, with shackles on their legs, half 
perished with hunger, — these cry against us from the 
ground. And now that the black hull of the rakish vessel is 
approaching the coast, and these prisoners are liberated, — 
liberated only to be more closely packed on board the 
slaver, — Oh, what bitter lamentations, what multitude of 
voices cry out against us ! The winds and the waves, the 
mighty surge on the beach, join in the melancholy chorus ; 
and the scores of negroes, who are often swamped and 



42 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

drowned in tlieir passage to the slave ships, and whose 
bodies are washed ashore by the swelling tide, once more 
cry against us. But the bitter cries that are heard on boar( 
those floating tombs of gasping humanity on the might}' 
deep, by the hundreds who are starved below the decks, anc 
the sum total of misery endured by those who live to reach 
the opposite continent, are known only to God himself!" 

Formed with the same capacity of pain, 
The same desii-e of pleasure and of ease. 
Why feels not man for man ? When nature shrinks 
From the slight puncture of an insect's sting. 
Faints, if not screened from sultry suns, and pines 
Beneath the hardship of an hour's delay 
Of needful nutriment ; — when Liberty 
Is prized so dearly, that the slightest breath 
That ruffles but her mantle, can awake 
To arm unwarlike nations, and can rouse 
Confed'rate states to vindicate her claims : — 
How shall the suiF'rer man his fellow doom 
To ills he mourns or spurns at ; tear with stripes 
His quiv'ring flesh ; with hunger and with thirst 
Waste his emaciate frame ; in ceaseless toils 
Exhaust his vital powers ; and bind his limbs 
In galling chains ! Shall he, whose fragile form 
Demands continual blessings to support 
Its complicated texture, air, and food, 
Raiment, alternate rest, and kindly skies, 
And healthful seasons, dare with impious voice 
To ask those mercies, whilst his selfish aim 
Arrests the general freedom of their course, 
And, gratified beyond his utmost wish. 
Debars another from the bounteous store ! 

Roscoe*s Wrongs of Africa. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EFFOETS TO ABOLISH THE SLAVE TRADE. 

Leviticus xxv. 10. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and pro- 
laim liberty throug-hout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof, 
fc shall be a jubilee unto you ; and ye shall return every man unto his 
possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. 

O Liberty ! thou goddess heavenly bright, 
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight ! 
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign. 
And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train ; 
Eased of her load. Subjection grows more light, 
And poverty looks cheerful in thy sight ; 
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of Nature gay, 
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day. 

Joseph Addison". 

The slave trade having been tolerated for over 
jWO centuries, at length public attention in England 
and America was aroused to its dreadful evils. 

Among the earliest and most zealous advocates of 
fche abolition of this traffic were the members of the 
society of Friends, whose founder, George Fox, 
solemnly protested against it, as utterly indefensible. 
As early as 1668, the celebrated William Penn de- 
nounced the trade as impolitic, unchristian, and 
cruel. In 1696 the subject was introduced at the 
annual meeting of the Society, and gradually an 



44 THE AFRICAIT SLA YE TRADE. 

interest was awakened, until, at the yearly meeting 
in London, in 1727, it was resolved, "That the im 
porting of negroes was cruel and unjust, and was 
therefore, severely censured by the meeting." Ii 
1760, they went farther, and resolved to exclude 
from their Society all who participated in the iniqui 
tons traffic. 

One of the first instances on record of a voluntar} 
surrender of slave property, was by a Mr. Mifflin, i 
Friend, who, on inheriting forty slaves from hi^ 
father, gave them their liberty.* 

But the Friends were not alone in their nobL 
efforts to crush this iniquity. Eminent divines and 
statesmen entered the field against the traffic. The 
Rev. Morgan Godwyn, of the Church of England, 
published the first treatise directly bearing upon the 
subject, entitled " The IsTegro's and Indian's Advo- 
cate," which he dedicated to the Archbishop of Can- 
terbury. He had witnessed the cruel treatment of 
the slaves in the Island of Barbadoes, and he fear- 
lessly uttered his sentiments concerning the op- 
pressors. 

About the same time, the devoted Richard Bax- 
ter pleaded with fervor and eloquence for the rights 
of the African. In his " Christian Directory," he 
used language, which, if employed in this sensitive 
age and nation, would certainly expose him to the 
charge of fanaticism. He said that, " those who go 

* Condensed from "Fox's History of Missions in Africa, and 
Account of the Slave Trade." 



EICHARD BAXTER GEORGE WHITEFIELB. 45 

lit as pirates, and take any poor Africans, and 
eople of another land, who never forfeited hfe or lib- 
rty, and make them slaves, or sell them, are the worst 
f robbers, and ought to be considered as the com- 
lon enemies of mankind ; and that they who buy 
hem, and use them as mere beasts of burden, for 
aeir own convenience, regardless of their spiritual 
v^elfare, are fitter to be called demons than Chris- 
ians " 

Many other treatises and tracts were published, 
^hich took the strongest ground against the traffic. 
^s early as 1739, the eloquent preacher of righteous- 
less. Rev. George Whitefield, while in America, 
ddressed a letter to the settlers in districts where 
lavery existed, which produced a marked effect; 
nd to the close of life, he pleaded for the oppressed 
nth great success. The following is an extract 
Tom said letter : 

" As I lately passed through your provinces in my way 
lither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling for the 
niseries of the poor negroes. Whether it be lawful for 
Christians to buy slaves, and thereby encourage the nations 
Tom whom they are bought to he at perpetual war with 
iach other, I shall not take upon me to determine. Sure I 
im it is sinful, when they have bought them, to use them as 
3ad as though they were brutes, — nay, worse ; and what- 
ever particular exceptions there may be, (as I would charit- 
ably hope there are some,) I fear the generality of you who 
own negroes are liable to such a charge ; for your slaves, I 
believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon 



46 THE AFEICAiq- SLAVE TRADE. 

you ride. These, after they have done their work, are fed 
and taken proper care of; but many negroes, when wearied 
with labor in your plantations, have been obliged to grind 
their corn after their return home. Your dogs are caressed 
and fondled at your table, but your slaves, who are fre- 
quently styled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege. 
They are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall 
from their master's table. Not to mention what numbers 
have been given up to the inhuman usage of cruel task- 
masters, who, by their unrelenting scourges, have ploughed 
their backs, and made long furrows, and at length brought 
them even unto death. When passing along, I have viewed 
your plantations cleared and cultivated, many spacious 
houses built, and the owners of them faring sumptuously 
every day, my blood has frequently almost run cold v/ithin 
me, to consider how many of your slaves had neither con- 
venient food to eat, nor proper raiment to put on, notwith- 
standing most of the comforts you enjoy were solely owing 
to their indefatigable labors." — Letter to the inhabitants of 
Maryland^ Virginia^ North and South Carolina, 1739. 

Few men felt more keenly the wrongs of the slave 
trade than the eminent John Wesley, a name that 
should be an authority in this land, south and north. 
In 1774, he published his " Thoughts upon Slavery," 
and burning thoughts they are. We give two as 
specimens. Would that our brethren of the Meth- 
odist church would publish the whole tract, and cir- 
culate it over the country. He says : 

" y. I add a few words to those who are more inamediately 
concerned. 

"1. To Traders. — You have torn away children from their 



Wesley's thoughts on slayery. 47 

irents, and parents from their children ; husbands from their 
Ives ; wives from their beloved husbands ; brethren and sisters 
om each other. You have dragged them who have never 
)ne you any wrong, in chains, and forced them into the 
lest slavery, never to end but with life ; such slavery as is 
Dt found among the Turks in Algiers, nor among the 
3athens in America. You induce the villain to steal, rob, 
urder men, women, and children, without number, by pay- 
g him for his execrable labor. It is all your act and deed. 

your conscience quite reconciled to this ? Does it never 
iproach you at all ? Has gold entirely blinded your eyes, 
id stupefied your heart ? Can you see, can you feel no 
arm therein ? Is it doing as you would be done to ? 
Lake the case your own. ' Master,' said a slave at Liver- 
Dol, to the merchant that owned him, ' what if some of my 
)untrymen were to come here, and take away mistress, and 
'ommy, and Billy, and carry them into our country, and 
ake them slaves, how would you like it ? ' His answer 
as worthy of a man : * I will never buy a slave more while 
live.' Let his resolution be yours. Have no more any 
art in this detestable business. Instantly leave it to those 
nfeeling wretches ' who laugh at human nature and com- 
assion.' Be you a man ; not a wolf, a devourer of the 
uman species. Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy. 

" Is there a God ? You know there is. Is he a just God ? 
hen there must be a state of retribution ; a state wherein 
le just God will reward every man according to his works, 
hen what reward will he render to you 1 Oh, think he- 
mes, before you drop into eternity ! Think now. ' He 
lall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no 
lercy/ Are you a man ? Then you should have a human 
eart. But have you, indeed ? What is your heart made 
f ? Is there no such principle as compassion there ? Do 



48 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TKADE. 

you never feel another's pain ? Have you no sympathy ? 
no sense of human woe ? no pity for the miserable ? When 
you saw the streaming eyes, the heaving breasts, the bleed- 
ing sides, and the tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, 
were you a stone, or a brute ? Did you look upon them 
with the eyes of a tiger ? Had you no relenting ? Did not 
one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your 
breast ? Do you feel no relenting now V If you do not, 
you must go on till the measure of your iniquities is fall. 
Then will the great God deal with you, as you have dealt 
with them, and require all their blood at your hands. At 
that day it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah 
than for you. But if your heart does relent, resolve, God 
being your helper, to escape with your life. Regard not 
money ! All that a man hath, will he give for his life. What- 
ever you lose, lose not your soul ; nothing can countervail 
that loss. Immediately quit the horrid trade. At all events, 
be an honest man. 

"2. To SlaveJiolders. — This equally concerns all slave- 
holders, of whatever rank and degree ; seeing men-huyers are 
exactly on a level with men-stealers ! ' Indeed,' you say, ' I pay 
honestly for my goods, and I am not concerned to know 
how they are come by.' Nay, but you are ; you are deeply 
concerned to know they are honestly come by : otherwise 
you are partaker with a thief, and are not a jot honestei 
than he. But you know they are not honestly come by 
you know they are procured by means nothing near so inno- 
cent as picking pockets^ house-hreaking, or robbery upon tht 
highway. You know they are procured by a deliberate 
species of more complicated villainy, of fraud, robbery, an( 
murder, than was ever practiced by Mohammedans or Paj 
gans ; in particular, by murders of all kinds ; by the blood oi 
the innocent poured upon the ground like water. Now it 



THOMAS CLARKSON. 49 

'pur money that pays tlie African butcher. Fow, therefore, 

ire principally guilty of all these frauds, robberies, and mur- 

iers. You are the spring that puts all the rest in motion. 

They would not stir a step without you : therefore, the blood 

)f all these wretches who die before their time lies upon 

/our head. ' The blood of thy brother crieth against thee 

from the earth.' Oh ! whatever it costs, put a stop to its cry 

3efore it be too late ; instantly, at any price, were it the half 

of your goods, deliver thyself from blood guiltiness ! Thy 

hands, thy bed, thy furniture, thy house, and thy lands, at pres- 

nt are stained with blood. Surely it is enough ; accumulate 

no more guilt ; spill no more the blood of the innocent. Do 

not hire another to shed blood ; do not pay him for doing it. 

Whether you are a Christian or not, show yourself a man. 

Be not more savage than a lion or a bear 1 " 

Similar earnest appeals were made by other dis- 
iinguished Christians and philanthropists. In 1785, 
Thomas Clarkson took tlie field against the traffic in 
human beings, and devoted to the sacred cause of 
human rights all the energies of his intellect, and 
sympathies of his heart. 

While pursuing his studies at Cambridge Uniyer- 
sity, " The Slave Trade " was given to him as a 
theme for a prize essay. Having, the year before, 
gained the first prize for a Latin dissertation, he was 
anxious to sustain his literary reputation, and secure, 
if possible, fresh laurels. He entered upon the 
investigation with great ardor; visited London, and 
read with avidity works bearing upon the subject. 
The horrible facts that passed in review before him 
so deeply afiected his mind, that he lost sight of the 
4 



50 THE AFRICAN SLA YE TRADE. 

honors of the university, in the intensity of his 
desire to redress the wrongs of Africa. "It is im- 
possible," he says, in his " History of Slavery," " to 
imagine the severe anguish which the composition 
of this essay cost me. All the pleasure that I had 
promised myself from the contest, was exchanged for 
pain, by the astounding facts that were now contin- 
ually before me. It was one gloomy subject, from 
morning till night. In the day, I was agitated and 
uneasy ; in the night I had httle or no rest. I was 
so overwhelmed with grief, that I sometimes never 
closed my eyes during the whole night ; and I no 
longer regarded my essay as a mere trial for literary 
distinction. My great desire now was to produce a 
work that should call forth a vigorous public effort 
to redress the wrongs of injured Africa." 

Under the influence of this desire, and with his 
intellectual powers thoroughly aroused and concen- 
trated upon the theme, he produced an essay that 
not only won the highest j)rize, but touched a chord 
in the English heart that has not ceased to vibrate 
to this hour. And the great secret of his success in 
this, and in his subsequent efforts, was the fact, that 
he gave his whole soul to the work. He thus de- 
scribes his feelings while on his way to London, after 
having read the essay at the university : " During 
my journey, the melancholy subject was not a mo- 
ment absent from my thoughts. I occasionally 
stopped my horse, dismounted, and walked. I tried 
frequently to persuade myself that the statements 



ASSOCIATES OF CLARKSO:?^. 51 

in my essay could not be true. But the more I 
reflected on the authorities on which they were 
founded, the more constrained was I to give them 
credit. I sat down, disconsolate, on the turf by the 
road-side ; and here it forcibly occurred to me, that 
if the statements that I had made were facts, it was 
high time that something should be done to put an 
end to such cruelties." 

These convictions increased, rather than dimin- 
ished, in the noble-hearted youth, and he felt that to 
accomplish any thing, he must give himself wholly to 
the work. Upon this point he consulted the ardent 
friends of freedom ; and after mature deliberation, 
and a careful survey of the difficulties of the under- 
taking, he resolved to abandon all other pursuits, 
and give his life to the abolition of the slave trade 
and slavery. 

The electric influence of his decision was at once 
felt upon others; — it increased their confidence, and 
fired their zeal. Sir Charles Middleton, M. P., Dr. 
Porteus, and Lord Scarsdale, both members of the 
House of Lords ; Granville Sharp, J. Phillips Ram- 
say, and the united Society of Friends, — all rallied 
to his support. They knew the sacrifices that he 
had made, the brilliant prospects for usefulness and 
distinction in the church that he had renounced, and 
the struggles through which his mind had passed, — 
and they applauded the decision. They were ixa- 
pressed with his sincerity, his ardor, and his readi- 
ness to obey the divine will in the matter. Nor was 



52 THE AFRICAISr SLAVE TRADE. 

he without encouragement from a higher source. 
He declared that he pledged himself to the task, 
" not because I saw any reasonable prospect of suc- 
cess in my new undertaking, but in obedience, I 
believe, to a higher power. And I can say, that 
both at the moment of this resolution, and for some 
time afterwards, I had more sublime and happy 
feelings than at any former period of my life." 

In the prosecution of his work, Clarkson visited 
every person in London and the vicinity, who had 
been connected with the slave trade, or who had 
visited Africa ; and he also inspected the slave ships, 
and informed himself upon every point touching the 
iniquity he had grappled with. The startling facts 
which he had accumulated, aroused many to the 
enormity of the evil, and especially Mr. Wilberforce, 
who at once cooperated with Mr. Clarkson, and 
through hfe rendered his name illustrious by his 
devotion to the cause of human hberty. 

Soon after, a committee of twelve gentlemen was 
formed for the purpose of bringing the evils of sla- 
very more fully before the British nation, and to 
organize a society for its entire abolition. At the 
head of this committee stood Granville Sharp, whom 
Clarkson justly styled, "the father of the cause in 
England." To promote their object, public meetings 
were held, treatises, showing the evils of the slave 
trade, were widely circulated, and many petitions 
were sent to Parliament, praying for the abolition 
of the traffic. 



FIEST EFFORTS I]S" PAELIAMEISTT. 53 

The history of the efforts made to secure the 
action of Parliament, though deeply interesting and 
instructive, our limits will not allow us to give in its 
details.* It is sufficient to state that the subject 
was introduced into the House of Commons in 1788, 
by Mr, Pitt, who proposed that the slave trade 
should be investigated at the next sessions. He was 
ably supported by Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, Sir. W. 
Dolben, and others, and the motion j^assed unani- 
mously. 

Another measure, on the 22d of May, was pro- 
posed by Sir W. Dolben, which excited alarm among 
the traders in Liverpool and Bristol. It was that 
the number of slaves brought in a vessel should be 
in proportion to its tonnage. This the jDro-slavery 
party were determined to resist, and they obtained 
leave to be heard by counsel before the House in 
their defense. But thus early, British philanthropy 
triumphed, and the motion passed by a large 
majority. 

As the friends of humanity pushed their measures,! 
opposition was of course excited, and the advocates 
of the traffic succeeded in defeating motion after 
motion, until 1804, when the abohtion bill was car- 
ried through the House of Commons. It was, how- 

* For a ftill account of these efforts, see " Clarkson's History of the 
Abolition of the Slave Trade . " 

t In April, 1792, no less than five hundred and seventeen petitions 
asrainst the slave trade had been laid before Parliament. 



54 THE AFRICA]^ SLAVE TEADE. 

ever, thrown out by tlie House of Lords, and the 
next year it was lost in the Commons. 

The people now rose in their strength, and pulpits 
and presses thundered their anathemas against the 
great national disgrace. The indefatigable Clarkson 
provided himself with fresh materials, that he might 
be ready to meet the arguments of his ojDponents, 
convince the doubting, and especially to influence 
the House of Lords to a right decision. 

The hour of victory was at hand. On the 10th 
of June, 1806, the following resolution was moved in 
both houses : " That this House, considering the 
African Slave Trade to be contrary to the principles 
of justice, humanity, and sound policy, will, with all 
practicable exj)edition, take efiectual measures for 
the abolition of said trade, in such manner, and at 
such period, as may be deemed advisable." 

In a lengthy debate, the resolution was opposed, on 
the ground that it might be injurious to the trade 
of LiverjDOol; affect unfavorably the planters, and 
gentlemen engaged in the traffic; reduce the rev- 
enue of the country; be a reflection upon the char- 
acters of their ancestors, who estabhshed the busi- 
ness, and deprive the Africans themselves of the 
advantages of a residence in the West Indies ; all of 
which arguments were scattered to the wind by the 
invincible logic of the defenders of the resolution. 
The Bishop of St. Asaph, in the upper House, re- 
marked, on commencing his speech, "My lords, I 
can not but assent to every part of the resolution 



ACT OF ABOLITION PASSED. 65 

ow before your lordships, at any season of the year, 
>r any day of the year, or any hour of the day." 
The idea of supporting the traffic on account of 
s antiquity, was ably refuted by the declaration 
lat any villainy which had existed since Cain mur- 
ered his brother, might be sustained on the same 
2:round. 
The assertion that the Scriptures countenanced 
le traffic, was denounced as " one of the greatest 
ibels that was ever published against the Christian 
-eligion." The other objections were disposed of 
rery easily, and the resolution passed by a majority 
)f ninety-nine in the House of Commons, and 
bwenty-one in the House of Lords. 

The next year a bill was introduced, entitled " An 
act for the abolition of the slave trade," which also 
passed by large majorities. The friends of humanity 
were now exultant. The heroes of the mighty rev- 
olution which had been achieved in public sentiment 
exchanged congratulations, and expressed their 
gratitude to Heaven for so signal a victory. 

In the midst of these rejoicings, a deep anxiety 
pervaded the kingdom, lest the bill should not 
receive the sanction of the Crown. But just before 
the dissolution of the ministry, it was announced 
that the king had given his assent, and the act, in 
the usual way, became a law. " Just as the clock 
struck twelve, while the sun was shining in its me- 
ridian splendor, as if to witness the august act, and 
to sanction it by its glorious beams, the magna 
charta of Africa was completed." 



56 THE AFEICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

Thus the first effectual blow against the slave 
trade was struck, and the friends of the African be- 
lieved that the unholy system had received its 
death-wound. But they did not rightly estimate 
the strength of human wickedness, and the power 
of those fiendish passions that were burning in the 
hearts of corrupt men. They did not see that the 
lust for gold would continue to seek gratification, at 
whatever expense of cruelty, and that brutes in 
human shape would laugh at compassion, sneer at 
just laws, and spurn the very idea of mercy. 

For, what does a man engaged in this traffic know 
of humanity, justice, or the rights of a fellow man ? 
What does he care for the sufferings of the captive, 
the shrieks of the agonized mother, the imploring 
looks and pathetic appeals of the dying slave? 
With the horrors of the middle passage constantly 
before him, does his heart relent ? Looking down 
upon the crowded group of miserable, groaning vic- 
tims of his cupidity, does a tear start in his eye ? 
Throwing overboard the sick, for the sake of the 
insurance, does he reflect upon the infinite sacrifices 
he makes to gain a few dollars ? A slave trader 
reflecting! What an absurdity! His conscience 
and heart moved ! He has no conscience, — has no 
heart. Look into the soul of the captain of a slave 
ship, and what do you see ? You need not read the 
vision of Dante, nor visit afterwards the regions of 
the lost. 

Still the friends of the slave were hopeful, and 



ACTS OF CONGRESS. 67 

brts were made to secure the cooperation of the 
ther European powers, and of the States of Amer- 
a, in the suppression of the traffic. Our country, 
owever, had been moving simultaneously with 
reat Britain ; and, to its honor be it said, it was 
le first to prohibit the prosecution of the slave 
rade. 

As early as 1794,* it was enacted, that no person 
n the United States should fit out any vessel for 
he purpose of carrying on any traffic in slaves to a 
breign country, or for procuring from any foreign 
country the inhabitants thereof, to be disposed of as 
laves. In 1800, it was declared to be unlawful for 
my citizen of the United States to have property in 
my vessel employed in transporting slaves from 
)ne foreign country to another, or to serve on board 
uch a vessel. 

A more stringent law was passed in 1807, to take 
effect on the first of Januar^^, 1808, declaring that 
no one should bring into the United States, or the 
territories thereof, from any foreign country, any 
negro, mulatto, or person of color, with the intention 
of holding him or selling him as a dave ; and heavy 
penalties were imposed on the violators of this law. 
As an evidence of the progress of public senti- 
ment, and the general and deep-seated abhorrence 
of the slave trade in the American mind at that 
time, the traffic, in 1820, was ipronounced piracy^ and 

* Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. xi. p. 433. 



58 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

the guilty participators in the crime were adjudged 
worthy of death. It was enacted : 

"If any citizen of the United States, heing of the crew, or 
ship's company of any foreign ship or vessel engaged in the 
slave trade, or any person whatever, being of the crew or 
ship's company of any ship or vessel owned in the whole, or 
navigated for, or in behalf of, any citizen or citizens of the 
United States, shall land from any such ship or vessel, and 
on any foreign shore seize any negro or mulatto, not held to 
service or labor by the laws of either of the States or Territo- 
ries of the United States, with intent to make such negro or 
mulatto a slave, or shall decoy, or forcibly bring, or carry, or 
shall receive such negro or mulatto on board any such ship 
or vessel, with intent as aforesaid, such citizen or person 
shall be adjudged a pirate, and on conviction thereof, before 
the Circuit Court of the United States, for the district 
wherein he may be brought or found, shall suffer death/* 

At that period, and as far back as the time when 
the United States Constitution was adopted, the 
hostility to slavery was national, and the pro-slavery 
feeling was local, and limited to a comparatively 
small portion of the people. We might fill volumes 
with the testimony of the great and good men of 
that day, which contributed to the formation of the 
public opinion that called for the enactment of 
the laws to which we have referred. 

In addition to the opinions of Washington,'ireffer- 
son, Patrick Henry, Jay, and Hamilton, already 
quoted, let me call the reader's attention to the sen- 



pe:n^nsylyania abolition society. 59 

ents of others, whose influence and services are 

jorporated in the history of the republic. 

Benjamin Franklin, according to Steuben's ac- 

iint, (see Life of Franklin, by William Temple 

anklin,) was President of the Pennsylvania So- 

ty for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and as 

3h signed the memorial that was presented to the 

3use of Representatives of the United States, on 

12th of February, 1789, praying that body to 

ert, to their fullest extent, the power vested in 

em by the Constitution, in discouraging the traffic 

human flesh. In the memorial the system of sla- 

ry is condemned in the strongest language, and it 

)ses with a most touching and earnest appeal to 

Senate and House of Representatives of the 

nited States, " to devise means for removing this 

consistency from the character of the American 

3ople, and to step to the very verge of the power 

3sted in them for discouraging every species of 

affic in the persons of our fellow men." 

Other memorials were sent in 1791. In the 

lemorial from Connecticut it is stated : 

" That the whole system of African slavery is unjust in its 
ature, impolitic in its principles, and in its consequences 
linous to the industry and enterprise of the citizens of 
lese States." 

The memoriahsts from Pennsylvania say : 

" We wish not to trespass on your time by referring to the 
ifferent declarations made by Congress, on the inalienable 



60 THE AFEICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

right of all men to equal liberty^ neither would we attempt, ii 
tills place, to point out the inconsistency of extending free- 
dom to a part only of the human race." 

Hear, also, the voice that sixty years ago was 
uttered by Virginia : 

" Your memorialists, believing that ' righteousness exalteti 
a nation,' and that slavery is not only an odious degradation, 
but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights 
of human nature^ and utterly repugnant to the precepts of 
the gospel, which breathes ' peace on earth, and good will 
to men,' lament that a practice so inconsistent with true 
policy, and the inalienable rights of men, should subsist in an 
enlightened age, and among a people professing that all man 
kind are by nature equally entitled to freedom." 

These memorials were not only read in the House 
of Representatives, but were referred to a select 
committee. 

James Monroe, in a speecb pronounced in the 
Virginia Convention, said : 

" We have found that this evil has preyed upon the very 
vitals of the Union, and has been prejudicial to all the States 
in which it has existed." 

The views of Samuel Adams may be learned from 
the following extract : 

" His principles on the subject of human rights carried 
him beyond the narrow limits which many loud asserters of 
their own liberty have prescribed to themselves, to the recog- 
nition of this right in every human being. One day the wife 



SSTIMOi^Y FEOM GEORGIA WM. PINKNEY. 61 

Ir. Adams returning home, informed her husband that a 
lid had made her a present of a female slave. Mr. 
ims replied, in a firm, decided manner : '^She may come, 
not as a slave, for a slave can not live in my house , if she 
es, she must come freeJ She came, and took her free 
de v/ith the family of this great champion of American 
rty, and there she continued free, and there she died 
." — Rev, Mr. Allen, Uxbridge, Mass. 

k.t a meeting in Darien, Georgia, in 1775, tlie fol- 
ing resolution was put forth : 

To show the world that we are not influenced by any 
tracted or interested motives, but by a general philan- 
opy for all mankind, of whatever climate, language, or 
aplexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and dbhor- 
ce of the unnatural practice of slavery, (however the 
cultivated state of the country, or other specious argu- 
nts, may plead for it ;) a practice founded in injustice and 
elty, and highly dangerous to our liberties as well as lives, 
casing part of our fellow creatures below men, and corrupt- 
the virtue and morals of the rest, and laying the basis of 
it liberty we contend for, and which we pray the Al- 
yhty to continue to the latest posterity, upon a very wrong 
ndation. We therefore resolve, at all times to use our 
nost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this 
ony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the 
Isters and themselves." — Am. Archives, Ath Series, Vol. I., 
1135, 

The patriotic, high-minded, and eloquent Wil- 
.m Pinkney, in a speech in the Maryland House 
Delegates, in 1789, said: 



62 THE AFEICAIS" SLAVE TRADE. 

" Eternal infamy awaits the abandoned miscreants, wlios 
selfish souls could ever prompt them to rob unhappy Afric 
of her sons, and freight them hither by thousands, to poiso 
the fair Eden of Liberty with the rank weed of individuj 
bondage ! Nor is it more to the credit of our ancestors, thj 
they did not command these savage spoilers to bear thei 
hateful cargo to another shore, where the shrine of freedoi 
knew no votaries, and every purchaser would at once 
both a master and a slave. 

" In the dawn of time, when the rough feelings of ba: 
barism had not experienced the softening touches of refine 
ment, such an unprincipled prostration of the inherent righ 
of human nature would have needed the gloss of an apolog} 
but to the everlasting reproach of Maryland, be it said, thj 
when her citizens rivaled the nation from whence they ei 
grated, in the knowledge of moral principles, and an enthi 
siasm in the cause of general freedom, they stooped to b( 
come the purchasers of their fellow creatures, and to intr< 
duce an hereditary bondage into the bosom of their counti 
which should widen with every successive generation. 

'' Eor my own part, I would willingly draw the veil 
oblivion over this disgusting scene of iniquity, but that tl 
present abject state of those who are descended from thei 
kidnapped sufferers, perpetually brings it forward to tl 
memory. 

" But wherefore should we confine the edge of censure 
our ancestors, or those from whom they purchased ? Ai 
not we equally guilty f They strewed around the seeds 
slavery, — we cherish and sustain the growth. They intr| 
duced the system, — loe enlarge, invigorate, and confirm 
Yes, let it be handed down to posterity, that the people 
Maryland, who could fly to arms with the promptitude 
Eoman citizens, when the hand of oppression was lifted 



WAKNER MIFFLDf. 63 

Tainst themselves ; who could behold their country deso- 
ted, and their citizens slaughtered ; who could brave, with 
nshaken firmness, every calamity of war, before they would 
ibmit to the smallest infringement of their rights, — that 
lis very people could yet see thousands of their fellow 
eatures, within the limits of their territory, bending be- 
eath an unnatural yoke ; and, instead of being assiduous to 
estroy their shackles, anxious to immortalize their duration, 
) that a nation of slaves might for ever exist in a country 
here freedom is its boast." 

The whole speech is one of irresistible force, noble 
entiment, and burning eloquence. 

The style in which the House of Representatives 
ras addressed at that period, may be learned from 
he letter of Warner Mifflin, dated in Kent County, 
)elaware, 2d of 1st month, 1793. He said: 

" But whether you will hear or forbear, I think it my duty 
D tell you plainly, that I believe that the blood of the slain, 
nd the oppression exercised in Africa, promoted by Amer- 
ans, and in this country also, will stick to the skirts of 
very individual of your body, who exercise the powers of 
3gislation, and do not exert then- talents to clear themselves 
f this abomination, when they shall be arraigned before the 
remendous bar of the judgment -seat of Him who wiU not 
ail to do right, in rendering unto every man his due ; even 
lim who early declared, 'at the hand of every man's 
rother wiU I require the life of man ; ' before whom the 
latural black skin of the body will never occasion such 
egradation. I desire to approach you with proper and due 

spect, in the temper of a Christian, and the firmness of a 
eteran American fireeman, to plead the cause of injured 



64 THE AFEICAlSr SLAVE TRADE. 

innocence, and open my moutli for my oppressed brethren, 
who can not open theirs for themselves. . . . The almost 
daily accounts I have of the inhumanity perpetrated in these 
States, on this race of men, distresses me night and day, and 
brings the subject of the slave trade with more pressure on 
my spirit; and I believe I feel a measure of the same obliga- 
tion that the prophet did when he was ordered to ' cry 
aloud, spare not ; lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show 
my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their 
sins/ And here I think I can show that our nation is re- 
volting from the law of God, the law of reason and humanity, 
and the just principles of government, and with rapid strides 
estabhshing tyranny and oppression." 

When the subject of continuing or abolishing the 
slave trade was before the Convention called to 
frame the Constitution of these United States, some 
of the members expressed very boldly and fully their 
views upon the whole slavery question. I will give 
a few extracts, as reported by Mr. Yates, (pp. 64-67 :) 

" It was said that we had just assumed a place among 
independent nations, in consequence of our opposition to the 
attempts of Great Britain to enslave us, that this opposition 
was grounded upon the preservation of those rights to which 
God and nature had entitled us, not in particular, but in 
common with all the rest of mankind. That we had appealed 
to the Supreme Being for his assistance as a God of freedom ; 
who could not but approve our efforts to preserve the rights 
which he had thus imparted to his creatures; that now, 
when we scarcely had risen from our knees, from supplica- 
ting his aid and protection — in forming our government over 
a free people, a government formed pretendedly on the 



SPEECH OF MR, YATES. 65 

rinciples of liberty, and for its preseryation, — in that gov- 
mment to have a provision, not only putting it out of its 
ower to restrain and prevent the slave trade, even encour- 
^ing that most infamous traffic, by giving the States power 
Qd union, in proportion as they cruelly and wantonly sport 
ith the rights of their fellow creatures, ought to be consid- 
red as a solemn mockery of, and insult to, that God whose 
rotection we then implored, and could not fail to hold us up 
detestation, and render us contemptible to every true 

lend of liberty in the world That, on the contrary, 

e ought rather to prohibit, expressly, in our Constitution, 
le further importation of slaves ; and to authorize the gen- 
al government, from time to time, to make such regula- 
ons as should be thought advantageous, for the gradual 
3olition of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves which 
re abeady in the States. 

That slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republi- 
mism, and has a tendency to destroy those principles on 
hich it is supported, as it lessens the sense of the equal 
ghts of mankind, and habituates us to tj^anny and oppres- 
on. It was further urged, that by this system of govern- 
lent, every State is to be protected both from foreign inva- 
ons and from domestic insurrections ; that from this consid- 
ration, it was of the utmost importance it should have a 
ower to restrain the importation of slaves, since in propor- 
on as the number of slaves was increased in any State, in 
le same proportion the State is weakened, and exposed to 
)reign invasion or domestic insurrection, and by so much 
iss will it be able to protect itself against either, and there- 
)re will, by so much the more, want aid from, and be a bur- 
en to, the Union." 

But I need not multiply testimonies on this point, 
very student of American history knows what has 



66 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TKADE. 

been the state of the public mind, in the past, on the 
question before us. 

But the inquiry is made, how far the laws against 
the slave trade, passed by Gre'tt Britain, the United 
States, and other nations,* were successful in sup- 
pressing the traffic. 

As we have already intimated, the answer to this 
question opens a melancholy chapter in the history 
of human nature. But before entering upon it, we 
can not but pay a passing tribute to the noble philan- 
thropy of Great Britain, and to the efforts of our 
ancestors to sweep from the earth the curse of the 
traffic in human beings. 

Whatever may have been the course of England 
in regard to her other great national interests, we 
must allow, that in her hostility to slavery and the 
slave trade, she has been firm, consistent, and self- 
sacrificing ; and deserves the hearty apjDlause of the 
civilized world. She has grappled with this evil 
boldly, manfully, as under a solemn consciousness 
of her obligations to society, and accountability to 
God. Mistress of the seas, she has struck this infa- 

* In 1815, Louis XVIII,, by the treaty of Paris, consented to the im- 
mediate abolition of tlie slave trade. Denmarl?:, as early as 1804, de- 
clared the trade unlawful. Sweden did the same in 1813, and in 1831 
conferred upon the free negroes in the island of St Bartholomew, al 
the privileg-es that the whites enjoyed, Portugal, having received th( 
promise of £300,000 from England, provided for the abolition of the 
slave trade in 1823. Spain came into the measure in 1820, her citizens 
having been paid £400,000 by England. On the 24th of December 
1814, the United States engaged, according to the treaty of Ghent, t( 
do all in their power to suppress the traffic. We shall soon see hoT^ 
the promise was fulfilled. 



NOBLE CONDUCT OF ENGLAND. 67 

Qous traffic from the roll of her commerce. Sov- 
reign of vast territories, she has decreed that no 
lave shall breathe the air of her realms. 

Her diplomatic influence has been used to arouse 
ther governments to a sense of their duty, and 
ecure their cooperation in this great work of hu- 
aanity. For years she has, at great expense, sus- 
ained her cruisers along the coast of Africa, and 
Lear the West Indies, to break up the vile traffic. 
She has poured out her money like water, in the 
ause, having, in 1833, borrowed twenty millions of 
►ounds, to purchase the freedom of slaves in her col- 
>nies, and up to 1843, having expended fifteen millions 
f pounds sterling in payment to foreign govern- 
aents and courts, to effect the extinction of the 
lave trade. 

Had the other European nations come up to the 
7ork as they ought to have done, and had the good 
eginning made in America been prosecuted with a 
erseverance and zeal commensurate with the growth 
f our national power, and the increase of our edu- 
ational and religious privileges, this great wicked- 
less might have been annihilated. 

And why has America retrograded ? What has 
hilled her heart, and palsied her energies, and made 
er pause in the career of fame and glory ? What 
Las blinded the eyes of her citizens to their true 
Qterests, corrupted her government, struck dumb 
he ministers at the altar, and clothed oppression 
nth such power ? 



68 THE AFRICAN SLAYE TEADE. 

We have a goodly clime, 

Broad vales and streams we boast, 
Our mountain frontiers frown sublime, 

Old Ocean guards our coast ; 
Suns bless our harvest fair, 

With fervid smile serene, 
But a dark shade is gathering there I — * 

What can its blackness mean ? 

We have a birthright proud. 

For our young sons to claim, 
An eagle soaring o'er the cloud, 

In freedom and in fame ; 
We have a scutcheon bright, 

By our dear fathers bought, — 
A fearful blot distains its white, 

Who hath such evil wrought ? 

Our banner o'er the sea 

Looks forth with starry eye. 
Emblazoned, glorious, bold, and free, 

A letter on the sky. 
What hand, with shameful stain. 

Hath marred its heavenly blue ? 
The yoke ! the fetters ! and the chain I 

Say, are these emblems true ? 

TTiis day^ doth music rare 

Swell through our nation's bound. 
But Afric's wailing mingles there, 

And Heaven doth hear the sound ! 
O God of power ! we turn 

In penitence to thee ; 
Bid our loved land the lesson learn, — 

To hid iJie slave he free. Mrs. L. H. Sigourney. 

* Fourth of July. 



CHAPTER V. 

FAILURE OF MEASURES TO EXTERMLN'ATE THE 
SLAVE TRADE. 

Jeremiali xxxiv, 17. Therefore, thus saith the Lord, Te have not 
hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, 
and every man to his neighbor : behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, 
saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine ; and 
I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. 

It is a melancholy and startling fact, that the 
slave trade is not abolished, but continues, with all 
its attendant barbarities and unmitigated horrors. 
Cuba, Brazil, Porto Rico, and the United States, 
still furnish markets for men whose trade has been 
pronounced piracy, and whose crimes render them 
deserving of death. There is more cruelty, and a 
greater waste of life, than formerly, owing to the 
smallness of the vessels employed, the scanty pro- 
visions furnished, and the haste with which the cap- 
tives must be taken, in order that the pirates may 
escape seizure by the armed vessels in pursuit of 
them. 

Mr. Buxton, who is good authority on this point, 
says : 



70 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

" It has been proved, by documents which can not be con- 
troverted, that for every cargo of slaves shipped towards the 
end of the last century, two cargoes, or twice the numbers in 
one cargo, wedged together in a mass of living corruption, 
are now borne on the waves of the Atlantic ; and that the 
cruelties and horrors of the traffic have been increased and 
aggravated hj the very efforts we have made for its ahoU- 
tion. Each individual has more to endure ; aggravated suf- 
fering reaches multiplied numbers. At the time I am writ- 
ing, there are at least twenty thousand human beings on th'fe 
Atlantic, exposed to every variety of wretchedness which 
belongs to the middle passage. ... I am driven to the sor- 
rowful conviction, that the year from September, 1837, to 
September, 1838, is distinguished beyond all preceding 
years for the extent of the trade, for the intensity of its mis- 
eries, and for the unusual havoc it makes of human life." 

Judge Joseph Story, in his charge to the grand 
jury of the United States Circuit Court, in Ports- 
mouth, N. H., May term, 1820, after reviewing the 
laws which have been enacted for the suppression 
of the slave trade, remarked: 

" Under such circumstances, it might well be supposed 
that the slave trade would, in practice, be extinguished, — 
that virtuous men would, by their abhorrence, stay its pol- 
luted march, and wicked men would be overawed by its 
potent punishment. But, unfortunately, the case is far other- 
wise. We have but too many melancholy proofs, from un- 
questionable sources, that it is still carried on with all the 
implacable ferocity and insatiable rapacity of former times. 
Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasion ; and watches 
and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened, rather than 



JUDGE STORY. 71 

ppressed, by its guilty vigils. American citizens are 
eeped up to their very mouths, (I scarcely use too bold a 
D^ure,) in this stream of iniquity. They throng the coasts 
f Africa, under the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, 
ometimes selling abroad 'their cargoes of despair,' and 
ometimes bringing them into some of our southern ports, 
nd there, under the forms of the law, defeating the pur- 
oses of the law itself, and legalizing their inhuman but 
)rofitable adventures. I wish I could say that New Eng- 
and, and New England men, were free from this deep pol- 
ution. But there is some reason to believe that they who 
irive a loathsome traffic, ' and buy the muscles and the 
)ones of men,' are to be found here also. It is to be hoped 
the number is small; but our cheeks may weU burn with 
shame while a solitary case is permitted to go unpunished. 
'^ And, gentlemen, how can we justify om-selves, or apolo- 
gize for an indifference to this subject ? Our constitutions 
of government have declared that all men are born free and 
equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are 
the right of enjoying their lives, liberties, and property, and 
of seeking and obtaining their own safety and happiness. 
May not the miserable African ask, ' Am I not a man, and 
a brother ? ' We boast of our noble struggle against the 
encroachments of tyranny, but do we forget that it assumed 
the mildest form in which authority ever assailed the rights 
of its subjects, and yet that there are men among us who 
think it no wrong to condemn the shivering negro to per- 
petual slavery ? 

" "We believe in the Christian religion. It commands us 
to have good will to all men ; to love our neighbors as our- 
selves, and to do unto all men as we would they should do 
unto us. It declares our accountability to the Supreme 
God for all our actions, and holds out to us a state of future 



72 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

rewards and punisliments, as the sanction by whicli our con- 
duct is to be regulated. And yet there are men calling 
themselves Christians, who degrade the negro by ignorance 
to a level with the brutes, and deprive him of all the conso- 
lations of religion. He alone, of all the rational creation, 
they seem to think, is to be at once accountable for his 
actions, and yet his actions are not to be at his own disposal, 
but his mind, his body, and his feelings, are to be sold to 
perpetual bondage. To me it appears perfectly clear, that 
the slave trade is equally repugnant to the dictates of reason 
and religion, and is an offense equally against the laws of 
God and man." 

We shall not undertake the ardnons task of fixing 
the precise amount of guilt that belongs to our na- 
tion, for the failure of the efforts to destroy this 
traific. The amount of that guilt can not be esti- 
mated, — can not be put into language. The indif- 
ference that has been manifested towards the evils 
of the traffic ; the toleration of the domestic slave 
trade, by which the puKlic conscience has been ren- 
dered callous ; the extension of slave territory, in 
spite of the solemn remonstrances of the enlightened 
and patriotic jDortion of the people ; and the refusal 
of the government to cooperate Avith the nations of 
Europe in their humane efforts, have tended to sus- 
tain the traffic, and place us in an anomalous posi- 
tion before the world. 

After the refusal of the United States, in 1833, to 
join with England and France for the suppression 
of the traffic, what encouragement has there, been 



EDINBURGH REVIEW. 73 

for those goyernments to renew their applications 
"or cooperation ? This shameful refusal is thus re- 
ferred to in the 128th number of the Edinburgh 
Review : 

" We have, however, to record one instance of positive 
refusal to our request of accession to these conventions, and 
:hat, we grieve to say, comes from the United States of 
[America, — the first nation that, by its statute lav,^, branded 
Lhe slave trade with the name of phacy. The conduct, 
Imoreover, of the President does not appear to have been 
perfectly candid and ingenuous. There appears to have 
been delay in returning any answer, and when returned, it 
seems to have been of an evasive character. In the month 
of August, 1833, the English and French ministers jointly 
sent in copies of the recent conventions, and requested the 
accession of the United States. At the end of March fol- 
lowing, seven months afterwards, an answer is returned, 
which, though certainly not of a favorable character in other 
respects, yet brings so prominently into view, as the insuper- 
able objection, that the mutual right of search of suspected 
vessels was to be extended to the shores of the United 
States, (though we permitted it to American cruisers off the 
coast of our West Indian colonies,) that Lord Palmerston 
w^as naturally led to suppose that the other objections 
were superable. He, therefore, though aware how much the 
v,^hole efficiency of the agreement will be impaired, consents 
to waive that part of it, in accordance with the wishes of the 
President, and in the earnest hope that he will, in return, 
make some concessions of feeling or opinion to the wishes of 
England and France, and to the necessities of a great and holy 
cause. The final answer, however, is, that under no condition, 
in no form, and with no restrictions, will the United States 
enter into any convention or treaty, or make combined 



74 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

efforts of any sort or kind, with other nations, for the sup- 
pression of the trade. We much mistake the state of public 
opinion in the United States, if its government will not find 
itself under the necessity of changing this resolution. The 
slave trade will, henceforth, we have little doubt, be carried 
on under that flag of freedom ; but as in no country, after 
our own, have such persevering, efforts for its suppression 
been made, by men the most distinguished for goodness, wis- 
dom, and eloquence, as in the United States, we can not be- 
lieve that their flag will long be prostituted to such vile pur- 
poses ; and either they must combine with other nations, or 
they must increase the number and efliciency of their naval 
forces on the coast of Africa and elsewhere, and do their work 
single-handed. We say this the more, because the motives 
which have actuated the government of the United States 
in this refusal, clearly have reference to the words * right of 
search.' They will not choose to see that this is a mutual 
restricted right, effected by convention, strictly guarded by 
stipulations for one definite object, and confined in its opera- 
tions within narrow geographical limits ; a right, moreover, 
which Eno'land and France have accorded to each other, 
without derogating from the national honor of either. If we 
are right in our conjecture of the motive, and there is evi- 
dence to support us, we must consider that the President 
and his ministers have been, in this instance, actuated by a 
narrow provincial jealousy, and totally unworthy of a great 
and independent nation." 

The New York Joumal of Commerce, of Septem- 
ber, 1835, thus refers to the article under the head of 

THE SLAVE TRADE. 

" The 1 28th number of the Edinburgh Review contains an 
article on this subject, of more than ordinary interest. In 



JOURNAL OF COMMERCE. 75 

1831, a convention was concluded between the governments 
of England and France, for the more effectual suppression 
of the slave trade ; in furtherance of which object, the two 
contracting parties agreed to the mutual right of search 
within certain geographical hmits. They moreover cove- 
nanted io use their best endeavors, and mutually to aid each 
other, to induce aU. the maritime powers to agree to the 
terms of their convention. The fact that such overtures had 
Deen made to some nations has occasionally been hinted at, 
Dut the results we have now for the first time learned." 

After noticing the reception of the proposition by 
the other European powers, the Journal of Com- 
merce adds : 

" We come now to our own country, the United States. 
And what shall we say ? What must we say ? What does 
the truth compel us to say ? Why, that of all the countries 
appealed to by Great Britain and France on this momen- 
tous subject, the United States is the only one which has 
returned a decided negative. We neither do anything our- 
selves to put down the accursed traffic, nor afford any facil- 
ities to enable others to put it down. Nay, rather, we stand 
between the slave and his deliverer. We are a drawback, 
a dead weight on the cause of bleeding humanity. How 
long shall this shameful apathy continue ? How long 
shall we, who call ourselves the champions of freedom, 
close our ears to the groans, and our eyes to the tears and 
blood, and our hearts to the untold anguish of thousands and 
tens of thousands who are every year torn from home and 
friends, and bosom companions, and sold into hopeless bond- 
age, or perish amid the horrors of the ' middle passage ? ' 
From the shores of bleeding Africa, and from the channels 
of the deep, from Brazil and from Cuba, echo answers, ' How 
loner?'" 



76 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TKADE. 

Through the valleys, and over the plams of this 
widely extended country, through the streets of 
every village, town, and city in the Union ; through 
tlie churches of America, the halls of legislature, 
the courts of justice, and the mansions of executive 
otHcers, we would reiterate the cry, " How long ? " 
Is the conscience of the nation absolutely dead ? Is 
there no heart to feel, no eye to see the horrors of 
tlie traffic, no tongue to speak for the agonized suf- 
ferers in the " middle passage ? " Shall we go to 
France and England, to Denmark, Sardinia, and 
Mexico* to learn humanity? 

*Even, unfortunate (!) Mexico, whose condition we so much com- 
miserate, can give us lessons in justice, mag-nanimity, and humanity. 
Shall we not send some of our politicians to school there ? It will be 
an economical arrangement, provided they stay long enough. 

The following decrees and ordinances are translated from an oflficial 
compilation, published by authority of the Mexican government. 

Decree of July 13, 1824. 
Prohibition of the Commerce and Traffic in Slaves. 
The Sovereign General Constituent Congress of the United Mexican 
States has held it right to decree the following: 

1. The commerce and traffic in slaves, proceeding from whatever 
power, and under whatever flag, is for ever prohibited within the ter- 
ritories of tlie United Mexican States. 

2. The slaves wlio may be introduced, contrary to the tenor of the 
preceding article, shall remain free in consequence of treading the 
Mexican soil. 

3. Every vessel, whether national or foreign, in which slaves may 
be transported and introduced into the Mexican territories, shall be 
confiscated, with the rest of its cargo, — and the owner, purchaser, 
captain, master, and pilot, shall suffer the punishment of ten years' 
confinement. 

Decree of President Guerrero. 
Abolition of Slavery. 
The President of the United Mexican States, to the inhabitants of 
the Republic — 



I 



SLAYEEY AIS'D SLAVE TRADE INSEPARABLE. 77 



Every apology that has been made in this country 
br slavery ; every argument used in its favor ; every 
nstance of apostasy from the ranks of freedom by 
influential statesmen; every attempt to drag the 
Bible to the support of the system ; and especially 
every square mile of new territory opened for the 
introduction of slaves, has contributed to the failure 
of the efforts to abolish the foreign traffic. The sys- 
tem of slavery, as existing and supported in this 

Be it known : That in the year 1829, being- desirous of signalizing 
the anniversary of our independence by an act of national justice and 
beneficence, which may contribute to the strength and support of such 
inestimable welfare,as to secure more and more the public tranquillity, 
and reinstate an unfortunate portion of our inhabitants in tlie sacred 
rights granted them by nature, and may be protected by the nation, 
Tinder wise and just laws, according to the provision in article thirty 
of the Constitutive act j availing myself of the extraordinary faculties 
granted me, I have thought proper to decree : 

1. That slavery be exterminated in the republic. 

2. Consequently those are free, who, up to this day, have been 
looked upon as slaves. 

3. Whenever the circumstances of the public treasury will allow it, 
the owners of slaves shall be indemnified, in the manner which the 
laws shall provide. 

Jose Maria de Bocanegra. 
Mexico, 15th Sept., 1829, A. D. 

[Translation of part of the law of April 6th, 1830, prohibiting the 
migration of citizens of the United States to Texas.] 

Art. 9. On the northern frontier, the entrance of foreigners shall 
be prohibited, under all pretexts whatever, unless they be furnished 
with passports, signed by the agents of the republic, at the places 
whence they proceed. 

Art. 10 There shall be no variation with regard to the colonies 
already established, nor with regard to the slaves that may be in 
them ; but the general government, or the particular state govern- 
ment, shall take care^ under the strictest res2)onsihility , that the coloni- 
zation laivs be obeyed, and that no more slaves be introduced. 



78 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

country, is vitally and indissolubly connected with 
the African slave trade. The tv\''0 are essentially 
one. Each inevitably fosters the other. If any great 
wickedness is tolerated, it is impossible to control 
the shape which that wickedness shall, in all time, 
assume. It is natural for it to break out in new 
forms, and to grow in strength and power. 

The doctrine has been maintained by eminent 
divines, that we have nothing to do with sla- 
very in those States where it is an established 
institution. Supposing this to be proved, will not 
slavery have something to do with us? Can 
these teachers of the people and creators of public 
opinion imagine for a moment that the master will 
lie down in perfect quietness within the limits for- 
merly assigned to him, and have no desire to roam 
over new territory ? Can his instincts be gratified, 
and his fierceness soothed, at the same time ? 

The extension of slavery and the encouragement 
of the slave trade are the natural growth of the 
institution of slavery among us. This is abundantly 
shown in the annexation of Texas, which is but one 
act of several examples that might be adduced. 
The determination to secure this country, which 
plunged us into a war with Mexico, sprang from a 
desire to extend slavery, although at the time, great 
efforts were made to blind the eyes of the people to 
this fact. 

An accurate writer who labored zealously to 



DESIGN OF THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS. 79 

enlighten and arouse the public mind on this point, 
said, in speaking of the war in Texas : 

" It is susceptible of the clearest demonstration, that the 
immediate cause, and the leading object of this contest, 
originated in a settled design among the slaveholders of this 
country, (with land speculators and slave traders,) to wrest 
the large and valuable territory of Texas from the Mexican 
republic, in order to reestablish the system of slavery ; to 
open a vast and profitable slave market therein ; and, ulti- 
mately, to annex it to the United States. And, further, it 
is evident, — nay, it is very generally acknowledged, — that 
the insurrectionists are principally citizens of the United 
States, who have proceeded thither for the purpose of revo- 
lutionizing the country ; and that they are dependent upon 
this nation for both the physical and pecuniary means to 
carry the design into effect. We have a still more impor- 
tant view of the subject. The slaveholding interest is now 
paramount in the executive branch of our national govern- 
ment ; and its influence operates, indirectly, yet powerfully, 
through that medium, in favor of this grand scheme of op- 
pression and tyrannical usurpation. 

V^ ^ ^ 7^ Tp^ 7K 

" Such are the motives for action, — such the combination 
of interests, — such the organization, sources of influence, 
and foundation of authority, upon which the present Texas 
insurrection rests. The resident colonists compose but a 
small fraction of the party concerned in it. The standard 
of revolt was raised as soon as it was clearly ascertained that 
slavery could not be perpetuated, nor the illegal specula- 
tions in land continued, under the government of the Mexi- 
can republic. The Mexican authorities were charged with 
acts of oppression, while the true causes of the revolt, — the 



80 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

motives and designs of the insurgents, — were studiously 
concealed from the public view. Influential slaveholders 
are contributing money, equipping troops, and marching to 
the scene of conflict. The land speculators are fitting out 
expeditions from New York and New Orleans, with men, 
munitions of war, provisions, &c., to promote the object. 
The independence of Texas is declared, and the system of 
slavery, as well as the slave trade, (with the United States,) 
is fully recognized by the government they have set up. 
Commissioners are sent from the colonies, and agents are 
appointed here, to make formal application, enlist the sym- 
pathies of our citizens, and solicit aid in every way that it 
can be furnished." 

^ When this iniquity has so far ripened that the 
national goyernment of the "great republic of 
liberty" were ready to plunge into a war with 
Mexico, to reestablish slavery u|X)n soil from which 
the curse had been removed, and were searching for 
pretexts for the war, the Hon. John Quincy Adams, 
in his speech in the House of Representatives, in 
May, 1836, said: 

" But, sir, it has struck me, as no inconsiderable evidence 
of the spirit which is spurring us into this war of aggression, 
of conquest, and of slave-making, that all the fires of ancient, 
hereditary national hatred are to be kindled, to familiarize 
us with the ferocious spirit of rejoicing at the massacre of 
prisoners in cold blood. Sir, is there not yet hatred enough 
between the races which compose your southern population 
and the population of Mexico, their next neighbor, but you 
must go back eight hundred or a thousand years, and to an- 
other hemisphere, for the fountains of bitterness between 



SPEECH OF J. Q. ADAMS. 81 

you and them ? What is the temper of feeling between the 
component parts of your own southern population, between 
your Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French, and Moorish- Spanish in- 
habitants of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri ? 
between them all and the Indian savage, the original posses- 
sor of the land from which you are scourging him already 
back to the foot of the Rocky Mountains ? What between 
them all and the American negro, of African origin, whom 
they are holding in cruel bondage ? Are these elements of 
harmony^ concord, and patriotism between the component 
parts of a nation starting upon a crusade of conquest ? And 
what are the feelings of all the motley compound, equally 
heterogeneous of the Mexican population ? Do not you, an 
Anglo-Saxon, slaveholding exterminator of Indians, from 
the bottom of your soul, hate the Mexican-Spaniard-Indian 
emancipator of slaves, and abolisher of slavery ? And do 
you think that your hatred is not with equal cordiality re- 
turned ? Go to the city of Mexico, — ask any one of your 
fellow-citizens who have been there for the last three or 
four years, whether they scarcely dare show their faces, as 
Anglo-Americans, in the streets. Be assured, sir, that how- 
ever heartily you detest the Mexican, his bosom burns with 
an equally deep-seated detestation of you. 

" And this is the nation with which, at the instigation of 
your executive government, you are now rushing into war, 
— into a war of conquest, — commenced by aggression on 
your part, and for the reestablishment of slavery, where it 
has been abolished, throughout the Mexican republic. 
* ***** 

" And again I ask, what will be your cause in such a war? 
Aggression, conquest, and the reestabhshment of slavery, 
where it has been abolished. In that war, sir, the banners 
of freedom will be the banners of Mexico; and your ban- 

6 



82 THE AFKICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

ners, I blush to speak the word, will be the banners of 
slavery." 

The feeling excited in England at the time, by 
this movement, was very great. The friends of hu- 
manity there felt that it would not only embarrass 
the efforts which were in progress for the suppression 
of the slave trade, but would actually contribute to 
the revival of the traffic. And this result we are 
beginning to experience. The following is taken 
from the London Times. 

" Mr. T. F. Buxton expressed his belief that if the Ameri- 
cans should obtain possession of Texas, which had been truly 
described as forming one of the fairest harbors in the world, a 
greater impulse would be given to the slave trade than had 
been experienced for many years. If the British govern- 
ment did not interfere to prevent the Texan territory 
from falling into the hands of the American slaveholders, in 
all probability a greater traffic in slaves would be carried on 
during the next fifty years, than had ever before existed. 
The war at present being waged in Texas, differed from any 
war which had ever been heard of 

"It was not a war for the extension of territory, — it was 
not a war of aggression, — it was not one undertaken for the 
advancement of national glory ; it was a war which had for 
its sole object the obtaining of a market for slaves — [Hear, 
hear.] He would not say that the American government 
connived at the proceedings which had taken place ; but it 
was notorious that the Texans had been supplied with mu- 
nitions of war of all sorts, by the slaveholders of the United 
States — [Hear, hear.] Without meaning to cast any cen- 
sure upon the government, he thought that the House had a 



GUILT OF AMERICA. 83 

right to demand tliat tlie Secretary for Foreign Affairs adopt 
strong measures to prevent the establislmient of a new and 
more extensive market for tlie slave trade tlian had ever 
before existed." 

Before the tribunal of Heaven, before the court 
of civilization, our nation must stand condemned of 
the guilt of placing obstacles in the way of the abo- 
lition of the slave trade. The nation, of all others, 
which the world had a right to expect would do her 
duty upon this question, has been false to the first 
principles of justice, false to the common dictates of 
humanity. The great free republic has stretched 
out her arm to prevent Europe from breaking off 
the fetters from the enslaved children of Africa. 
What a chapter in the history of America for the 
historian to write two centuries hence ! But a 
darker chapter is just now opening. Another har- 
vest from the seeds of iniquity that have been scat- 
tered broadcast over the land, is beginning to ripen. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EVIDENCES OF THE REVIVAL OP THE SLAVE TRADE 
IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Isainh i. 4. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed 
of evil-doers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the 
Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they 
are gone away backward. 

St. James v. 1. Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your 
miseries that shall come upon yo2i. 

4. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your 
fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth : and the cries of 
them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of 
Sabaoth. 

5. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton ; ye have 
nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 

f). Ye have condemned and killed the just ; and he doth not resist 
you. 

Ecclesiastes viii. 11. Because sentence against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set 
in them to do evil. 

E'en now, e'en now, on yonder western shores, 
Weeps pale Despair, and writhing Anguish roars ; 
E'en now in Afric's groves, with hideous yell, 
Fierce Slavery stalks and slips the dogs of hell 5 
From vale to vale the gathering cries rebound. 
And sable nations tremble at the sound. 

Who right the injured, and reward the brave. 
Stretch your strong arm, for ye have power to save. 
Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, 
Inexorable Conscience holds his court ; 
With still small voice the plots of guilt alarms, 
Bares his masked brow, his lifted hand disarms ; 
But, wrapped in night, with terrors all his own, 
He speaks in thunders when the deed is done. 
Hear him, ye Senates : hear this truth sublime, 
He who allows oppression shares the crime. 

Erasmus Darwin. 



DAN GEE OF SENTmEJS^TS IN^ FAYOR OF TRAFFIC. 85 

It would be a libel upon the Southern States of 
our confederacy to say that, as a body, they were in 
favor of the revival of the slave trade, or to say that 
the southern people were unanimous in their ap- 
proval of slavery. 

We knoAV, from personal acquaintance, that there 
are many noble men and women at the South, who 
see and acknowledge the evils of the system, and 
deeply deplore its existence. There are thousands, 
also, who abhor the slave trade, and deprecate the 
efforts that are being made for its resuscitation. 
And our desire is to fortify such in their opinions, 
and secure their cooperation with the power of 
the North and West, in resisting those efforts. 
Unless there is such cooperation, to enlighten the 
people in reference to the dangers that threaten 
them, the public opinion may become corrupt upon 
this topic, as it has in years past upon other ques- 
tions growing out of slavery. 

Some may take the ground that the foreign slave 
trade is an evil too stupendous to allow us to think 
for a moment of its extensive revival in this country. 
But does history prove that this country is averse 
to fostering stupendous evils ? Has the govern- 
ment, or the people, shown any great timidity in 
trampling under foot the principles of right, the dic- 
tates of humanity, the pledges of the past ? Have 
solemn contracts preserved soil consecrated to free- 
dom from the invasion of the slave power ? Has an 
enlightened conscience secured deference to God's 



86 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

government, when the laws of human government 
have ehished with it ? Do not multitudes regard 
the sentiment of a '' higher law " as a jest ? an " over- 
ruling Providence " as an obsolete idea ? 

The traffic is conducted with so much secrecy, 
and such vigilance is exercised to escape detec- 
tion, that it is difficult to obtain full evidence of 
its extent in this country. Still, there is proof 
enough to show that it is carried on in Cuba and 
Brazil to an alarming degree, and that American cit- 
izens are guilty of jDarticipating in it. 

The state of the trade at the present time may be 
learned from Harper's Cyclopaedia of Commerce, 
published in New York, in 1858, — a reliable 
authority. Under the article " Slave Trade," * the 
following statement is made : 

"Passing over the interval from the period when the 
slave trade was declared to be piracy, to the year 1840, we 
find the number introduced into Brazil from that year to 
1851, inclusive, was 348,609, or a little more than 30,000 a 
year. During the same period, the number imported into 

Cuba amounted to an average of about 6,000 a year 

As perhaps not more than three fourths of the whole num- 
ber was reported to the mixed commission, the yearly aver- 
age for this period, (for both countries,) may be set down at 

45,000 The slave trade is now mainly, if not 

wholly, carried on with Cuba, which imports about 20,000 
slaves every year ; which added to the total of the trade 
with both Brazil and Cuba, since the year 1850, gives the 

* Page 1728. 



STATISTICS OF THE TRADE AT PKESEI^T. 87 

average number imported every year up to the present 
time, at about 30,000. If the profit realized on the pur- 
chase of one slave amounts, as we have shown, to $365, the 
total profits of one year's trade will therefore be about $11,- 
000,000. * « * * . 

^' It is estimated that in the port of New York alone,^ 
about twelve vessels are fitted out every year for the slave ' 
trade, and that Boston and Baltimore furnish each about the 
same number, making a fleet of thirty-six vessels, all engaged 
in a commerce at which the best feelings of our nature re- 
volt. If to these be added the slavers fitted out in other East- 
ern ports besides Boston, vf e will have a total of about forty, 
which is rather under than over the actual number. Each 
slaver registers from 150 to 250 tons, and costs, when ready 
for sea, with provisions, slave equipments, and every thing 
necessary for a successful trip, about $8,000. 

"Here, to start with, we have a capital of $320,000, the 
greater part of which is contributed by Northern men." / 

A table of costs is then given, and, — ^*-****^ 

" From this estimate, it will be seen that the amount 
of capital required to fit out a fleet of slavers, is about 
$1,500,000, upon which the profits are so immense as 
almost to surpass belief. In a single voyage of the 
fleet, 24,000 human beings are carried off from diflerent 
points on the slave coasts ; and of these, 4000, or one sixth of 
the whole number, become victims to the horrors of the mid- 
dle passage, leaving 20,000 fit for market. For each of 
these, the trader obtains an average of $500, making a total 
for the whole 20,000 of $10,000,000. 

" Now if we estimate the number of trips made by each 
vessel in a year at two, we will have this increased to $20,- 
000,000. Each vessel, it is true, can make three, and some- 
times four trips; but as . some are destroyed after the first 



88 THE AFEICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

voyage, we have placed the number at the lowest estimate. 
The expenses and profits of the slave trade for a single year, 
compare as follows : 

Total expenses of two voyages, - - - $3,000,000 
Total receipts of two voyages, - - - 20,000,000 

Profits, - - - -$17,000,000" 

The case of the slave yacht Wanderer is fresh in 
the memories of the people. Her cargo of human 
beings has been distributed over various plantations, 
the slaves having been sold for $800 and $1000 each, 
and some even as high as $1500. Against the captain 
the Grand Jury for the District of Georgia found 
indictments, but the United States Judge in South 
Carolina refused to issue a warrant for his arrest. 
So much for justice, and obedience to the laws of 
the land ! 

The Echo was seized in the act of attempting to 
land slaves on the coast of Cuba. The bark E. A. 
Rawlins was seized in the bay of St. Joseph, where 
she had taken upon herself the new name of Rosa 
Lee. Last December, she cleared from Savannah, 
with rice on board. At that time there were suspi- 
cions that she was a slaver, but she escaped. Two 
and a half months later, she was taken in St. Joseph's 
bay, an unfrequented place, westward of Apalachi- 
cola River. There was abundant evidence to believe 
that she had been to Africa, taken on board her liv- 
ing freight, subjected the victims to all the horrors 
of the "middle passage," and landed them at Cuba 
and on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. 



advertiseme:n^ts. 89 

A suspicious looking vessel was seen off tlie mouth 
of the Apalachicola, avoiding the j^ilots who ap- 
proached her, her papers irregular, and the captain 
having taken an assumed name. A Spanish captain 
had been on board, who, the crew confessed, had 
been murdered. 

Another case occurred near Mobile, and the crew 
were arrested, and brought before the Grand Jury 
of South Carolina. But these grave representatives 
of American justice, these protectors of innocence, 
refused to find indictments against the guilty men, 
and the United States judge for that district was 
equally resolute in refusing to enforce the laws 
against the slave trade. 

So bold are some in their movements, that re- 
cently imported Africans are publicly offered for 
sale. The following is from the Richmond Reporter, 
(Texas,) of the 14th of June, 1859: 

For Sale. — Four hundred likely African negroes, lately 
landed upon the coast of Texas. Said negroes will be sold 
upon the most reasonable terms. One third down ; tlie re- 
mainder in one or two years, with eight per cent, interest. 
For further information, inquire of C. K. C, Houston, or L. 
B,. G., Galveston. 

And the Tribune quotes from the Vicksburg 
True Southron of the 13th, an account of an Afri- 
can Labor Supply Association, of which the Hon. J. 
B. D. De Bow is President. 

Thus it is evident that this trade is to be encour- 



90 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TEADE. 

aged in defiance of law, and organized efforts are to 
be made to secure the repeal of the laws enacted by 
our fathers against this evil. 

A Washington correspondent of the New York 
Herald, said to be an accurate and reliable writer, 
stated, on the authority of a United States senator, 
that the number of cargoes of African slaves landed 
on the coast of the United States, and smuggled 
into tlie interior, since May, 1858, a period of fifteen 
months, amounts to sixty or seventy,* and twelve 
vessels more are expected within ninety days. If 
grand juries and judges refuse to enforce the laws 
against the slave trade, it may be indefinitely in- 
creased. And from despatches received at the Navy 
Department, from tlie frigate Cumberland, dated at 
Porto Praya, Ai)ril 15, 1859, it appears that during 
the last year the trafiic has greatly increased. Those 
despatches state that yachts, schooners, and trading 
vessels are engaged in the business, and that small 
armed vessels are required, that can sail up the rivers 
and capture the slavers. 

To encourage the trade, it is stated that eighteen 
slaveholders in Enterprise, Miss., recently pledged 
themselves to buy 1000 negroes, at a certain price, 
if they were brought from Africa. 

But I will let the southern papers and politicians 
speak for themselves. They have si3oken, and their 
dark schemes of infamy and cruelty are before the 
nation. 

* This is higher than the estimate in Harper's Cyclopaedia, but that 
writer thinks that he understates the actual number. 



SOUTHERN NEWSPAPERS. 91 

The Apalachicola (Fla.) Advertiser says : 

" Until the slave trade is opened and made legal, the 
South will push slavery forward, as a seasoning for every 
dish. This is the settled and determined policy of a party 
at the South. We do not pretend to belong to the ultra- 
southern party, but we believe it a duty which the general 
government owes to the South, that the slave trade should be 
legitimate, that her vast domain may receive cultivation." 

If this paper does not belong to tlie ultra southern 
party, we should be glad to have it define its posi- 
tion. If there is any wickedness, beyond rendering 
" the slave trade legitimate," we have yet to be in- 
formed of it. 

In April, 1859, the citizens of Metagorda, Texas, 
passed the following resolution : 

" Resolved^ That our delegates to the Convention be re- 
quested to inquire into the expediency of obtaining negro 
laborers suited to our climate and products, from some for- 
eign country, and recommend measures by which the impor- 
tation can be carried on under the supervision and protec- 
tion of the State." 

At a meeting held in Hanesville, Appling County, 
Georgia, Col, Goulding, of Liberty, (!) offered sev- 
eral resolutions, which were adopted, one of which 
was, " that all laws of the federal government, in- 
terdicting the right of the southern people to im- 
port slaves from Africa, are unconstitutional, and 
violative of the rights of the South ; and that said 
laws are null and void, and a disgrace to the statute 
book." 



92 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

The New York Tribune of March 17, 1859, states 
that Dr. Daniel Lee, Professor of Agriculture and 
kindred sciences in the Georgia University, has writ- 
ten a letter in favor of reojoening the slave trade, — 
or, rather, in favor of African importations, — the 
better to develop the agricultural resources of the 
South. 

The necessity of more slaves to develop the re- 
sources of the South, and settle new territories, is 
becoming a favorite argument with the advocates of 
the revival of the foreign trade. And it will doubt- 
less become more and more prominent in the discus- 
sions which the subject of the African trade will 
awaken in the future. 

The Augusta Constitutionalist reports the speech 
delivered by the Hon. A. H. Stephens to a large 
concourse of people assembled in the City Park 
Hall, in July last, on the occasion of his resignation 
as representative in Congress, when he used the fol- 
lowing language : 

" As lie said, in 1850, he would repeat now, there is very 
httle prospect of the South settling any territory outside of 
Texas ; in fact, httle or no prospect at all, unless we increase 
our African stock. 

" The question his hearers should examine in its length 
and breadth ; he would do nothing more than present it ; but 
it is as plain as any thing, that unless the number of African 
stock be increased, we have not the population, and might 
as well abandon the race with our brethren cf the North, 
in the colonization of the territories. It was net for him to 



SOUTHTBN ]S"EWSPAPERS. 93 

advise on these questions: he only presented them. The 
people should think and act upon them. If there are but 
few more slave States, it is not because of abolitionism, or the 
Wilmot Proviso, but simply for the v^ant of people to settle 
them. We can not make States without people ; rivers and 
mountains do not make them ; and slave States can not he 
made without Africans" 

This language was addressed to the gentlemen 
and ladies of the city, and is said to have been re- 
ceived with great applause. 

At Fort Valley, Ga., there is published a newspa- 
per, called "The Nineteenth Century," which 'holds 
the following language in regard to the slave trade : 

" Necessity will demand it at no distant day, and we also 
believe that the necessity will bring about the object of it- 
self, without much noise or confusion on the part of the 
southern people." 

So it seems that the flood gates of this stream of 
moral and physical death are to be opened quietly, 
without much disturbance of the public conscience, 
a few slight tremors, perhaps, and without much 
"noise" from that unfortunate class whose nerves 
are affected by the horrors of the middle passage. 
Perhaps the soothing influences of the " Mneteenth 
Century " will aid in this matter, and the introduc- 
tion of modern improvements may render the Afri- 
can more submissive to his fate. 

There is still another argument for the revival of 



94 THE AFRICAN" SLAVE TRADE. 

the slave trade alluded to by the " Southern Confed- 
eracy," published at Atlanta, Ga. 

That paper declares, that "The African slave 
trade is the hope and bulwark of southern interests. 
It is the basis underlying the future greatness and 
permanency of the slave States. Without its estab- 
hshment, the institution (slavery) will soon become 
useless." 

We have said that there was a vital connection 
between American slavery and the African slave 
trade, and here we have one of the proofs. We see 
the direct result of the doctrine which has been so 
strenuously maintained, that the institution should 
not be meddled with where it was estabUshed. As 
well might we be told. You must not touch the roots 
of the tree, but if the branches should spread too 
widely, or the fruits become too bitter, these points 
maybe carefully and judiciously considered! The 
principle laid down in Matthew iii. 10, is: "And 
now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees ; 
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good 
fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." 

The word " piracy " greatly troubles the friends 
of the slave trade. In May, 1859, at a meeting held 
in Parker County, Texas, it was 

" Resolved, That we demur to any law of Congress mak- 
ing the foreign slave trade piracy, as a usurpation of power 
not warranted by the Constitution of the United States, and 
ought to be repealed." 



A GEOEGIA GRAKD JURY. 95 

We come now to a document that deserves our 
careful attention. In May, the Savannah Republi- 
can published an indignant protest of the grand jury 
which recently indicted parties suspected of being 
engaged in the slave trade. The jurymen, being 
under oath to find a bill according to law, state that 
they did so against their will. The protest con- 
cludes thus : 

" Heretofore, the people of the South, firm In their con- 
sciousness of right and strength, have failed to place the 
stamp of condemnation upon such laws as reflect upon the 
institution of slavery, but have permitted, unrebuked, the 
influence of foreign opinion to prevail in their support. 

" Longer to yield to a sickly sentiment of pretended phi- 
lanthropy, and diseased mental observation of ' higher law ' 
fanatics, the tendency of which is to debase us in the estima- 
tion of civilized nations, is weak and unwise. They tlien un- 
hesitatingly advocate the repeal of all laws which directly or 
indirectly condemn the institution, and think it the duty of 
the southern people to require their legislators to unite their 
efforts for the accomplishment of this object." (Signed) 
Charles Gkant, Benedict Bourgein, 

H. S. Byrd, M. D., Jno. J. Jackson, 

S. Palmer, Geo. W. Garmy. 

This is certainly a very remarkable jaroduction. 
That it represents an extensive southern opinion, Tve 
will not believe without farther evidence. Its 
authors are alone responsible for it. 

We know that such sentiments are received with 
disgust by thousands at the South. Many distin- 



96 THE AFRICAIT SLAVE TRADE. 

guished men have already spoken out against the 
slave trade. Let such men be multiplied and sus- 
tained, and the South may be saved from self- 
destruction, and the nation from the guilt of that 
gigantic crime into which many are so madly 
plunging. 

We rejoice that our northern State legislatures 
are waking up to the magnitude of this evil. 

The following resolution against this traffic was 
passed April 12, 1859, by the New York State As- 
sembly, by a vote of 101 to 6 : 

" Resolved^ (if the Senate concur,) That the citizens of 
this State look with surprise and detestation upon the vir- 
tual opening of the slave trade within the Federal Union : 
that against this invasion of our laws, of our feelings, and of 
the dictates of Christianity, we solemnly protest : that we call 
upon the citizens of the Union to make cause in the name 
of religion and humanity, and as friends of the principles 
underlying our system of government, to unite in bringing 
to immediate arrest and punishment all persons engaged in 
the unlawful and wicked trade, and hereby instruct our sen- 
ators and representatives in Congress to exert all lawful 
power for the immediate suppression of this infamous traffic. 

" Resolved, That the Executive of this State be required 
to transmit a copy of this resolution to the legislatures of the 
several States of this Union, and earnestly request their 
cooperation in arresting this great wickedness." 

Would that every legislature that professes to 
love liberty, would follow the noble example set by 
the Empire State ! Would that every representa- 



DUTY OF LEGISLATOKS. 97 

tive would recall to his meniory the words of the 
gifted and eloquent Webster, as uttered in his speech 
on the President's protest : 

" We have been taught to regard a representative of the 
people as a sentinel upon the watch-tower of hberty. Is he 
to be blind, though visible danger approaches ? Is he to be 
deaf, though sounds of peril fill the air ? Is he to be dumb, 
while a thousand duties impel him to raise the cry of alarm ? 
Is he not rather to catch the lowest whisper that breathes in- 
tention or purpose of encroachment on the public liberties, 
and to give his voice, breath, and utterance at the first ap- 
pearance of danger ? Is not his eye to traverse the whole 
horizon, with the keen and eagle vision of an unhooded 
hawk, detecting through all disguises, every enemy, ad- 
vancing in any form towards the citadel he guards ? " 



CHAPTER Vir. 

COKCLUSIO]^^. 

r Isa. Iviii. 1. " Cry aloud, spare not: lift up thy voice like a trumpet, 
and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their 
sin." 

We have considered in the preceding chapters 
the cruelties and horrors of the slave trade; the 
desolating influence of the traffic upon Africa ; the 
efforts made to abolish the evil ; and the evidence 
of its continuance, and of the attempts to revive 
the trade. 

It only remains for us to allude to some of the 
inevitable effects of reopening a traffic, so revolting 
to every feeling of humanity, every dictate of con- 
science, and every law of God. 

There is no need of extended argument to show 
that the importation of Africans into this country 
would directly and fearfully augment that evil which 
already to so great an extent is paralyzing industry, 
blighting commerce, and destroying the best inter- 
ests of society. The disastrous influence of Ameri- 
can slavery upon agriculture, the mechanical arts, 
education, public virtue, religion, has been fully set 
forth by others. Measures have been proposed to 
mitigate the evils growing out of the system, and 



EFFECTS OP EEVIYING THE TEAFFIC. 99 

good men, North and South, have looked forward 
to the time when the nation would be relieved of 
this burden. But the revival of the foreign traffic 
will jDerpetuate and extend the system, and blast the 
hopes that have been entertained of its speedy 
removal. It will embarrass every measure for the 
elevation and improvement of those in bondage, 
tighten the chains of the oppressed, and discourage 
all effort at even gradual emancipation. 

The establishment of the American slave trade 
would also be a source of irritation between the 
North and South. Already the ill feeling produced 
by the encroachments of slavery is sundering fra- 
ternal relations, impeding the progress of trade, and 
exasperating one portion of the community against 
another. And let this additional firebrand be 
thrown in, and the flames of animosity would be 
kindled over the whole country. 

On the one side would be this evil, with its cruel- 
ties, its violation of all the principles of justice and 
humanity ; and on the other the intelligence, moral 
rectitude, and Christian virtue of millions of free- 
men. And to suppose that these elements can lie 
quietly side by side, is to suppose an utter impossi- 
bility. Our system of education must be corrupted 
to the very core ; our literature must be poisoned 
by the sentiments of the dark ages ; all traces of 
right and justice must be obliterated from our stat- 
ute books, and our religion must become a dead 
form, before such a result can be anticipated. Oil 



100 THE AFrJCA:^^ SLAVE TRADE. 

and water will not mingle. Barbarism and Chris- 
tianity were not made to dwell together in peace. 

We should also consider the inevitable effect of this 
evil npon the pulpits and churches of our land. Minis- 
ters of the gospel must either preach against this sin, 
or be corrupted and weakened by it. Professing Chris- 
tians must oppose it, or yield to it. And what must 
be the character of a church for purity, efficiency, 
and spiritual power, that tolerates such an iniquity ? 
Wliat would be its influence in converting men to 
the principles of brotherly love, self-denial, faith, and 
holiness taught by our Saviour ? Is it to be sup- 
posed that impenitent men will close their eyes to 
such gross inconsistencies ? 

Every man's common sense teaches him that the 
power of the gospel lies in its purity, and in its hos- 
tility to every form of sin. The instant it compro- 
mises with evil, it ceases to be the gospel of Jesus 
Christ. 

In conclusion, it is the solemn duty of every 
American patriot and Christian to rise up and de- 
cree that, let the consequences be what they may, 
another slave shall never pollute our coast, and that, 
God helping them, they will resist now and for ever, 
every attempt to revive this accursed traffic. To 
allow it, is to increase and perpetuate the evils that 
to-day threaten the very existence of the repubhc. 
It puts in peril the American Union, and what is 
more, endangers the liberties of the whole nation. 
No greater calamity could befall us, no greater 



EFFECTS OF REVIVII^G THE TRAFFIC. 101 

curse could smite us, than the reopening of the 
slave trade. War, jaestilence, and famine might not 
damage us as much as this iniquity. For we might 
resist the war, and recover from the effects of the 
j)estilence and famine, but this accursed thing strikes 
at the vitals of the republic. It breaks down the 
principles of the nation. It corrupts the morals, 
poisons the rehgion, and exposes us to the burning 
wrath of Jehovah. 

Should we in this enlightened age sanction such 
a wickedness, we should deserve to perish. If the 
heroes of the American revolution saw the incon- 
sistency of appealing to the God of freedom to ,aid 
them in their struggle, and then turning round to 
put chains upon their fellow men, how much more 
glaring the inconsistency and stupendous the wick- 
edness for us, while in the enjoyment of all the 
blessings of freedom, to use our power to enslave 
others, and deprive them of privileges that we would 
die rather than part with ourselves. And the mean- 
ness of such a course is as great as its guilt. 

We appeal to the patriotism of American citizens, 
and we ask them whether they are willing to see 
this great republic, freighted with so many human 
hopes, blessed as it has been of heaven, sacrificed at 
the altar of this great iniquity ? Shall we i^eril the 
brilliant prospects of the nation, provoke the wrath 
of God, become a hissing . and a by-word through- 
out Christendom, by madly clinging to that which is 
evil, and only evil, and that continually ? 



102 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

I knoAV of no spectacle so full of cheering hope 
and moral sublimity, as to see this nation, to-day, 
rise up in her strength and declare that the slaver 
sliall not touch our coast, that the virgin soil of the 
country shall not be polluted by the invasion of 
slavery, and that we will as speedily as possible throw 
off this burden from the ship of state, in order that, 
with every sail spread and the banner of freedom 
nailed to the mast-head, we may ride on triumph- 
antly, fulfilling our great mission among the nations 
of the earth. 

In this work there rests upon the church of Christ 
a vast responsibility. Every individual member is 
responsible for his opinion, his influence, and his 
action. And I believe that the American church 
has the power to decide this question. The slave 
trade and slavery can not stand against the united 
force of the pulpits and churches of the country. 
The triumph of Christianity will be the destruction 
of slavery. 






U 



% 

•^.. ^ 


' ■ 




^oo^ 




.^^ -^ 






v'°^ 



s:^"^V^.' 









x^^ '^'^- 



A' 



-^- r 



^^. 



ff I "V 



N^^ 



M 



*^ 



■^^ >-^" 



:^^ -^ <M 



■'b. 



^ -^c*. 



',^^^^- 



,^^ ■% 



^ - 



^t^-' 



■■;■ 0' 



:^ ,^^ -r. 



^'^^ 












^^ %. ^ v^C^,- 



^•^.^ 



3 0^ » I 



"^ V 



o, %^ii^^c 



4 X 







^ 



x^^ r>g$SMfe^ 












■^^ ^<i> 






,v 



^^% ° 



^ll\)^'> 






^^^ 



I B 



W^'^"-^. A 



-^ 



^ .A- 






^,. <^ 



ci^ ♦ 



<0' 



"^iZ^^ o^ 



v^^ 



,#^ 






^ <^ X 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




01 1 622 507 4 









•t. ■^ 






